Kingdoms Come
by Andi Horton
Summary: Newly crowned Kings and Queens, the Pevensies adjust to the task of running a kingdom as they try to restore land to the families the Witch drove from Narnia.
1. A Very Big Pile of Papers

Kingdoms Come

O0O0O0O

A Very Big Pile of Papers

O0O0O0O

"Well." A very young man —really a boy still— sat and stared, wide-eyed, at the very big pile of papers that sat before him. "Well."

The very young man was one Peter by name, formerly Peter Pevensie of London, England, now —as of just a few weeks ago— High King of Narnia, a magical land his youngest sister had found by walking through a wardrobe. And there was a very large pile of papers sitting on the table before him.

"Well," said Peter.

"Indeed," said Susan. Susan was Peter's sister, and she was eyeing the papers with, if it was possible, even greater disfavour than her older brother. Then, in case the point hadn't quite been gotten across, "my goodness."

"Yes," said Peter, and brother and sister stared at one another in great consternation.

"That's . . . an awful lot of paper," Peter said doubtfully. Susan pursed her lips.

"Parchment."

Peter blinked. "I beg your pardon."

"Parchment," Susan repeated. "I think they call it parchment here. At least, the Dwarf I've just made Head Housekeeper called it parchment when she brought me some to make lists for her of things that want doing. There's a difference, I think. It's not— here, you see?" She held the paper up so Peter could see the size and texture of it. "It's really rather coarse. You can sort of see the little bits of— of tree in it."

"And that makes it parchment?" Peter wondered, leaning forward to study the top sheet with growing interest. Susan shrugged. It was very unladylike of her, but she wasn't worried about that just then.

"I don't know." She sat back in the chair beside Peter's. "It's just really such a _lot_."

"I know," Peter said, and chewed his lip.

"And we have to read all of it, I suppose."

"I— I think we had really better. They went to an awful lot of trouble to put it all together for us. And I think it's a good cause, you know; I think everyone here is great fun, and all that, no matter whether they are Beavers or Squirrels or Centaurs or whatever they might be, but– but I really don't want we four to be the only humans in all of Narnia, you see? Because some of what Aslan said to me before the coronation, he— he seemed to say that Narnia was meant to be governed by humans. And if this works out properly, we won't be the only ones governing things, anymore, so— so I really think it would be best if we read it all through."

"They can't _all_ be applications for a restoration of stewardship, though, can they?" Susan asked in considerable —and not unjustified— dismay. "I mean, you only _just_ issued the proclamation what, not even two weeks ago! Surely it will take a little while for it to reach everywhere . . . what were the names of all those places the humans fled to? I thought that Talking Goat gave you a list."

"He did," Peter nodded, and carefully pulled a crumpled piece of paper —parchment— from a fold in his doublet. "It's a little . . . chewed, though. I suppose even Talking Goats can't quite help themselves." And he displayed the slightly mangled list for Susan's scrutiny.

"The Seven Isles, the Lone Islands —there are a lot of names under that in smaller script. I suppose they're the islands themselves— Galma, Brenn, Terebinthia, Calormen —goodness, such names!— and Archenland. Is that all of them?"

"I suppose it must be. I wonder how many humans there are out there."

"And how many of them will want to come back." Susan studied the list a moment longer, as Peter regarded her in surprise.

"You think they might not?"

"Well," Susan shrugged again —she really wasn't usually so graceless, but everything had been so suddenly thrust upon them that she had made several concessions to manners that she normally would not have dreamed of doing— "I think there's a chance some might not. They've never lived here, any of them, have they? It would have been their fathers or grandfathers, or maybe even their great-grandfathers who left Narnia when the Witch took over. Narnia is just a place where their ancestors lived; it's not anymore home to them than it was to us just a few weeks ago."

"I suppose you're right," Peter conceded. "But surely at least a few of them will want to try to make a go of it, don't you think? We're offering them all the land that was taken from them —well, from their ancestors, then— in the first place. Surely that will tempt at least a few people."

"Oh, I'm certain it will," Susan nodded. "But I only hope it tempts the _right_ people; I mean, those people who want to make things better for everybody, and are really willing to work to make a go of it. I'd hate to think we might end up with a lot of greedy younger sons just looking for a leg up, wouldn't you?"

Peter, who was beginning to see there was a great deal to this that he had not thought to think through, looked at Susan in something very like open horror.

"Oh, no, you don't think we will, do you?"

"I don't _know_ that we'll end up with anything, Peter!" Susan was beginning to look a trifle put out as she shuffled through a very few of the many papers on the table before them. "I only know that this is an awful lot of reading to do, and that we've got any number of other things pressing on us, too. There's a whole lot of airing-out to be done all over the place —you wouldn't believe the wretched state the servants' quarters are in, it would be positively cruel of us to ask anything or anybody to sleep in there in the state they're in now— and there are food stores to be laid in, and— and just _everything_. There's a lot to be done, and I'm not sure if a whole lot of reading is the most important thing right now."

"Maybe not," Peter sighed, "maybe not." He felt, for far from the first time, an edge of panic creeping in on him. This wasn't anything like the games they'd played as children, wielding tin swords and duelling over glass gems and rescuing each other from "prisons" made of overturned kitchen chairs. This was running an actual kingdom; this was government, and it was knowing that each decision they made would affect hundreds of thousands of their subjects, and it was all horribly daunting and dreadfully difficult.

"We should ask somebody for advice, I suppose," Susan decided. "It's rather good luck we've got all these Ministers to help out, I suppose, though they do _fuss_ at one so, don't they?"

Peter agreed that they did do that. "But I suppose you're right, we ought to ask their advice. I know there's a lot to be done, but I can't help thinking it might be easier to get it done if— if we have other people here to help us do them."

And Susan said that there might be something in that.

"But for now," Peter made a feeble and wholly ineffectual effort at straightening some of the papers out, "I suppose we ought to just leave these as they are, and see about—" But he broke off here, for the great doors at the end of the council chambers were thrown open with a wild bang, heralding the arrival of the pair's two younger siblings, Edmund and Lucy, and bringing with them a gust of wind strong enough to blow a good third of the papers all about the room in a dreadful sort of snowcloud.

"Oh!" Lucy stopped in her tracks, and covered her mouth with both hands. "Oh, Peter, I'm sorry; Susan, we hadn't any idea, we just— oh, I _am_ sorry, here, let me help," and she rushed forward at once to catch an armful of papers as they fluttered down.

"What is all this?" Edmund demanded, catching a few of the sheets and studying them. "Writ of purchase . . . patent of nobility for the house of— of— good night! This is unpronounceable."

"Let me see!" Lucy dropped her armful of papers on the end of the table, and turned to study the paper. "Umm, that_ is_ tricky. It looks like . . . maybe . . . Lor-in-ven-der-gall? Only there's too many g's and l's, I think. Maybe you're meant to gargle some of them." And I am certain she would have tried this, had not Peter spoken first, asking if they might have a hand in getting everything gathered up once more.

"Don't bother even trying to put it in any sort of order, though," he reassured them as everybody went about, stooping and scooping up the fallen documents. "I doubt it would matter much anyway— it's all a terrible jumble. I can't believe these were preserved for so long; I know a few of them are new, but most of these are over a hundred years old. They don't look it, though, do they? The archives must have some sort of magic about them, or something, or perhaps cold is good for papers. I don't know."

"Whatever it is, it seems to have worked," Susan decided, but she didn't sound too happy about it. "I suppose it really is important that we get at least some of this underway, or else it will take us the better part of a year to even begin to get around to them."

"That proclamation of Peter's ought to help, though," Edmund decided, tidying the pile of documents he had stacked on the table in front of him. "That was a pretty good idea on your part, Pete; announcing that all properties stolen from lords and nobles at the start of the Witch's reign and all the lands that people had to leave behind when they fled would be restored to human stewardship. I imagine we'll get at least a few applications out of that."

"Yes, and it will be nice to have a few other humans around, I suppose," Peter said, echoing his earlier comment, "but . . . I hope I'm not getting distracted by something unimportant. Susan says there's an awful lot to be done right here in the castle, after all."

"Well, there is," Edmund agreed, "but there's other things that need doing, too; I've been talking with that Dwarf Gruffle you appointed Minister of Agriculture, and he says it's a grand idea, getting some of these lords and such back here. He says as far as they've heard, the way the old system worked was a lot like a sort of modern version of the old feudal system back in . . . the other place." For even now, not even a month in Narnia, they had begun to forget a bit about England.

"Not with serfs, surely!" Susan looked horrified at such an idea, and Edmund said no, of course not.

"But the lords owned their bits of land, and they had tenants who paid a sort of rent and worked the land— farmed it, and such. It was all very closely monitored, and everything, so none of the lords could ever get away with cheating their tenants or taking more than their share, and to all accounts it worked quite well."

"It does sound very orderly," Susan observed, and Peter said there might very well be something in it.

"But for now," he set the last of the papers back on the table, "it's not the first of our concerns. For now I think we ought to see to getting this place habitable again, and maybe reinforce the wall along that road that leads to the mainland. I suppose a hundred years of snow would do damage to any road, but it seems to have done an especial lot to that one; I don't fancy the thought of a mudslide burying the first envoy that comes to welcome us."

"No indeed," agreed Susan, who had only just gone through the first of the correspondence they had received from neighbouring kingdoms, "I can't imagine anybody would enjoy that. We'll need to have it fixed by next week; that's when the envoy from Archenland is due to arrive."

"Can I put you onto that, then, Ed?" Peter wanted to know, and Edmund assured Peter that he could.

"I'd like to look at the whole infrastructure, actually," Edmund added. "A lot of the smaller roads got sort of flooded over during the thaw, you know; clearing them might make travelling much easier for everybody."

"Very good," Peter decided. "And— Susan and Lucy, you'll see to the castle, is that all right? Get it all cleaned out, and— and healthful, and that sort of thing?"

"It will take some doing," Susan said grimly, "but I suppose there's nothing for it but to try, is there? Lucy, do you want to see to the storage and public chambers or the living quarters?"

Lucy, after debating a moment, decided that she would see to all the sleeping chambers and private quarters, with the close help and supervision of their Dwarfish head housekeeper Mrs Clogg, so Susan agreed to look to the storage areas and all the public rooms. Peter, who felt a bit of the weight lift from his shoulders with every decision they made, nodded in no small relief.

"That's good, then. And I'll be sitting with the Ministers for the next little bit, and seeing what they have to say about the state the kingdom is in. I don't imagine we've seen the end of the Witch's forces by a long shot, and while they can't do much to us in any very big way, they could still be no end of a nuisance, and I'd just as soon root them out as soon as possible."

"Oh," said Susan, "but do you think we'll really need to?" And then, when the others asked her what she meant by that, she explained. "I only think that if they're really out there, we won't have any rooting out to do, that's all. I really rather think," this said with great apology, "that they'll already be looking for _us_."

It was, they agreed, a very sobering and appropriate note on which to part.

O0O0O0O

The running of a castle, as you may or may not know, is a very large affair. There are layers upon layers of things to be seen to, and they cannot all be seen to or even learned about in the space of a few months. There are staff to be hired —and staff are badly needed, too, in a castle that has sat empty and uncleaned for such a vast amount of time— and a whole castle to be sorted out and parceled off.

Ministers must be given rooms, since they need to be close at hand to do their advising, but when your Ministers aren't human they aren't given the sort of rooms humans are, so you find quite soon that the stables have got to be seen to, too (though of course these are a special sort of stable, and not at all like the stable where the regular dumb beasts are kept— though those stables have got to be seen to as well). And then it becomes a point of contention between your newly-appointed Head Housekeeper and your newly-appointed Head Groom who it is that gets to attend to the stables that house the Ministers, because the Talking Animals in Narnia aren't at all like the dumb ones, so do they qualify for cleaning from the housekeeping staff? Or, because they are animals, after all, do they qualify for cleaning from the stable hands? Bearing in mind that the stable hands will take great offence if you imply that they are not competent enough to clean out the luxurious stables inhabited by the Ministers, and you will see what a dilemma this posed for Susan and Lucy. In the end a very elaborate, rotating schedule was contrived that meant nobody was completely happy, so the Queens deemed it a success, and moved on to other problems.

As the spring thaw melted into a proper spring it began to rain, and they found that the castle roof was in dire need of patching. Water leaked in through cracks and holes so small they were nearly invisible to the naked eye, and the upper storage rooms flooded with a vengeance. Jolly King Lune of Archenland was visiting when the rain began. He was driven from his newly-cleaned bedchamber when a persistent leak began drip-drip-dripping on his head, and was forced to bunk with a pair of Dwarfish kitchen hands as another room was cleaned for him. His young son, Prince Corin, was moved in with the Queens with a view that he should bed down on the couch in the sitting area between their two rooms, but one roll of thunder put paid to that idea. Lucy and Corin both ran straight into the older Queen's room at the first crack of thunder, and Susan awoke the next morning to find her sister smushed against her side and a trembling little boy huddled under the blankets at the foot of her bed. As the rain showed no sign of slacking any time soon, Corin's couch was moved into Susan's room for Susan's own use so that Lucy and Corin could share Susan's bed for the rest of the Envoy's stay, with Susan singing lullabies to drown out the storms.

While Edmund and Peter sat down with King Lune in the relatively dry dungeons at Cair Paravel to hammer out some fine points of their trade agreements, Lucy at once put out a call for any creatures skilled in roof repair, and the summons was answered by a series of enthusiastic Squirrels and Talking Birds. As the birds fetched bits of straw and string and mud, the Squirrels carefully patched the holes and fashioned new gutters to draw the rain away from the roof. These gutters let rain run down off the sides of the castle, and on seeing the way the rain made a wretched state of the castle lawns, Susan sent for some diligent little Moles. These enthusiastic little chaps tunnelled drainage ditches away from the castle, into the moat, and for good measure they widened the moat as well, seeing as it had caved in badly under the weight of the melting snow. The one thing that really cast a pall over the events of that spring was not the leaking roof or the muddy lawn, but the sudden departure of the Archenlandish envoy, effected in great haste when urgent summons from Queen Lora in Archenland called King Lune and his people back to the castle at Anvard ahead of time, cutting the visit short by several weeks.

Spring eventually warmed and became summer, which meant that the monarchs could leave off castle repairs and lawmaking in order to venture further afield and see what state the rest of the kingdom was in. They were pleasantly surprised to find many of the properties abandoned by nobles at the start of the Long Winter were, if not in pristine condition, at least potentially habitable with only a minimal bit of work. Susan began to keep a careful list of all the properties and their respective conditions, and Lucy set about gathering estimates on the amount of time and work it would take to put each one to rights. Edmund found he could finally start his road repair scheme in earnest, and Peter began to receive a steady stream of replies from lords and ladies from all corners of the world.

"Some of them are terribly promising," he observed, as the four filed down to the seashore to take a brief, much-needed break from planning all the end-of-summer envoys to foreign parts. "I expect that our visits to these lands will turn up no end of useful people; it's a grand scheme, really. Gets a few extra bodies out of the way for the people who are housing them now, and it frees us up to focus on the diplomatic end of things, if the properties are all being supervised a bit closer to home."

"That one you got today was especially nice," Lucy reflected as they emerged from the castle onto the sun-drenched lawns. "I liked that he wants to bring his whole family straightaway . . . some of them want to just come themselves and look around, but he sounded as if he really meant to pitch in with both hands. And that's just the sort of folk we want for Narnia, isn't it?" Then, without waiting for an answer, she kicked off her slippers and darted down over the remainder of the lawn, over the soft white sand of the beach, and into the lapping tide. Peter, grinning, raced after her, but Edmund hung back, and Susan contented herself with settling onto the grass and tilting her head back to enjoy the sun.

"This," Susan sighed, smoothing the skirt of her gown, "is so much nicer than making laws."

"What," Edmund dropped to the grass beside her, "have you decided you don't like bossing people around after all then?"

"Ed . . ." Susan didn't look reproachful, exactly; she looked something closer to hurt. Edmund sat up quickly, and begged her pardon.

"I didn't mean that," he said, and touched her hand in a clumsy, earnest gesture of contrition. Susan mustered a smile, and said that was quite all right.

"I just don't think," she sighed, "that I will ever get any of this quite right. To have to see things cleaned and put to rights is one thing; I can do that. But to have to see a whole kingdom cleaned and its people put to rights just . . . Edmund, I'm really not certain I can!"

"Well," said Edmund, "nor am I. But it's our job now, isn't it? And somehow I don't think we'd have been given it, if we weren't going to be any good at it, eventually. Although," he concluded, "that's not to say that I don't think we'll be in need of a grand holiday every now and then; I mean, it's the sort of job that seems to demand it, isn't it?" And Susan agreed that it was.

"Do Kings and Queens get many holidays?" she wondered, and Edmund pulled a rather serious face at hearing this.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I suppose we might ask somebody. I rather doubt it, though, so we had really better make the best of this one . . . oho! Peter, you'd better watch yourself, she nearly had you, just now!"

His attention diverted by the antics of their brother and sister in the tide, Edmund sat up and watched the action, leaving Susan to drop back onto the grass and study the sky.

It seemed hardly fair, she thought, that the one job in the world that required a person to be so wholly and completely invested in every job held by everybody else was the only one that didn't come with a holiday. Something, she thought, would have to be done about that . . . but later. For now, she made up her mind to enjoy the sweet delight of lying back for just a moment, and not having to think of Queenly duties. For she knew in her heart of hearts that Edmund was right, and this was as much of a holiday as they were likely to have for a very long time.

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** New story! It's rather refreshing, really; I'm enjoying the fresh start feel I get each time I begin a new chapter.

Not many notes for this one, except to say of course that I have no claim, legal or otherwise, on CS Lewis and his exquisite _Chronicles of Narnia_. I am just delighted to have had the chance to read them, and to now have the chance to muck about in a world that's not my own!

Up next: Calling on Kingdoms, wherein some neighbourly visits are arranged to neighbouring countries.


	2. Calling on Kingdoms

Calling on Kingdoms

O0O0O0O

As you may or may not know, the time of year traditionally favoured by Narnians for making diplomatic visits is a period that runs from late spring to shortly before high summer. That is because those are the wettest and muddiest months in Narnia, and if people can at all contrive to get away from the flooding and the rain and the (occasional) mudslides, they leap at the chance. King Lune of Archenland had broken with tradition in visiting Narnia during that time, and he'd paid for it with a wet neck and ruined nightshirt; fortunately King Lune was a man of that sort of disposition that minds neither wet neck nor ruined nightshirt, and he'd had quite a laugh over the whole affair at breakfast the next day, but it was the sort of thing that let you know why a tradition had existed to begin with.

Unfortunately, although the Kings and Queens knew of the tradition (they had spent a very long time in the archival rooms, reading over all manner of old court documents and diaries and such, and had found out a great deal about the running of the kingdom from those) they were unable to uphold it. Narnia was very much in need of repair, and the children who ruled it knew they had to see to the things that wanted fixing in their own home before they went swanning off to visit other peoples'. That didn't, however, mean that they enjoyed it much, and when things were at their very wettest and muddiest (and they usually are, just before they take a turn for their warmest and sunniest) they found it especially hard to enjoy doing what had to be done.

"If only we could get away _before_ high summer," Lucy mused, swinging her feet, "it would be ever so much nicer, wouldn't it? We could get out of all this mud, and the rain . . . do you know, I hear this is the second-best time of year to visit the Southern kingdoms like Calormen and such. The best is the winter, of course, because it's quite pleasant down there when it's all snowy up here, but we've missed that, haven't we? Still, it would be much nicer to go to the South and see the desert and such now, when it's so mucky about, wouldn't it, Peter? Peter?"

"Mm," Peter said absently, his brow furrowed as he scrutinised an especially ink-splotched letter that he held. It was just after breakfast, which was the time that the new High King had set aside each day for reading the correspondence that had come in from all corners of the world. Lucy, who liked to read letters, sat at the table with him, but as Lucy was much smaller than Peter, and the table was almost too big even for the boy king, Lucy sat not only on her chair, but also on an especially thick book she had carried up from the library for the express purpose of raising her chin above the edge of the table. It also raised her feet well off the ground, and so Lucy, who could hardly bear to sit still even when she was firmly planted on the ground, swung her feet as she read and thought. Finding Peter unresponsive to her travel plans, she read and thought a little more before she looked up from her letter and spoke once more.

"What's that one about?" she wondered, her feet still swinging idly.

"A gentleman from Galma," Peter murmured, his eyes travelling over the muddled text, "with extremely poor penmanship has written me to express his desire to regain the plot of land that was stolen from his grandfather."

"Will you give it to him?" Lucy tilted her head to one side and a tangled blonde curl tumbled over her cheek. If Susan had been there she would have noticed Lucy hadn't washed her face after breakfast, but Lucy's brother only looked up from his letter to say he didn't see why not.

"His penmanship may be poor, but his claim is legitimate," Peter reflected, and set the letter to one side in the taller of two piles. "I'd like to have everyone home by next summer, if we can, or the summer after that at the latest. We'll be away this winter, of course, visiting the other kingdoms, but we'll have some people here appointed to check on the properties when they're under snow and see which are fit to withstand the winter. That way a year from now, when we're back from interviewing everyone, we'll know how many are ready for habitation and which still want some work done on them. Lucy," on seeing his little sister suddenly begin to wriggle all over, "whatever is wrong with you?"

"I _itch_," Lucy complained, and wriggled further in an attempt both to demonstrate this to her brother, and to scratch the aforementioned itch.

"Itch?" Peter studied her more closely. "Goodness, I shouldn't wonder— Lucy, you're filthy. When did you bathe last?"

"I don't know," Lucy screwed up her face in consideration. "I think it might have been two weeks ago."

"Two weeks!" Even Peter, who didn't exactly leap at the chance to scrub the back of his neck, couldn't contain his surprise. Lucy flushed.

"Oh, I know, it's dreadful of me, but I can't bear it! Washing, I mean. It's such a bother, Peter, having them bring up all that hot water just for me, when they might use it instead to clean something else!"

"But don't you have somebody who's supposed to— to see to things like that for you?" Peter asked, and Lucy made a terrible face.

"Yes, but Peter, I can't let her do things like that! I've tried, I really have— Susan made me promise I would try, so I did. But it's just so _peculiar_, I can't make myself like it; I really can't."

An outside listener might have lost track of the conversation at this point, but Peter, as it so happened, understood Lucy perfectly. They were speaking of the Dwarfish lady's maid who had been appointed to wait on Lucy, and see to things like bathing and dressing her. This is quite a normal thing for kings and queens to have, of course, and most of them grow up accustomed to having somebody hovering in the background at all times, just waiting to tuck them into something or other. However, the Kings and Queens of Narnia had not grown up like that, and it was still a dreadfully foreign thing for the siblings to be waited on at all times, and they were adjusting to it in rather different ways.

Peter and Edmund, who had to interact with a lot of foreign dignitaries and such, had managed to force themselves to accept it as a matter of fact, and had almost reached a point where they managed to not turn red all over every time a valet poured fresh hot water into the tub or tried to do up a button for them. Susan, who was fastidious by nature, had reconciled herself to the indignity by understanding it was the most efficient way to get clean and stay that way, and had even struck up a tentative rapport with the rather motherly little Dwarf who attended her. Lucy, however, was neither a diplomat nor fastidious, and so had been willing to sacrifice comfort for privacy. Peter, studying her more closely now, saw that her hair had not been combed properly in some time and that her fingernails were rather grubby. In spite of himself, he started to smile.

"Lucy, _how_ have you managed to escape Susan seeing you this way?" he demanded. "She'd have a fit!"

"Well, I do _wash_, you know," Lucy said, looking extremely offended. "I wash my face and hands, and sometimes I remember to wash my neck, too. I just can't yet stand getting into a tub and having some nice lady Dwarf I don't even know offering to pour me more hot water! I don't expect I'd mind her combing my hair and laying out my clothes and things like that, except that she only does that after I've washed, so . . . I just tell her I don't need her, and she goes away."

"I see," Peter said, and found his smile still had room to grow. "Well, sister dear, I am very much afraid that you will have to brace up and have at least one bath some time soon; it's getting very near time for us to venture out and pay a call on a kingdom or two ourselves, now."

"Oh, Peter, really?" Lucy, her itch forgotten, positively glowed. "I thought it would be months yet!"

"So did I, at first, but you wouldn't believe how well things have been going lately. These Ministers may fuss, but they get things done, too; Edmund has the whole infrastructure set up and running, and he says they can't find any use for him any more. The main roads have been cleared and repaired, and Susan says she's already found people to put to work on the better properties, and get some of them ready for habitation by autumn, so . . . I rather thought we had better head out to visit a few of the people who will be living in them, and pay some calls on the kings and such who have been hosting them."

"Oh, yes of course," Lucy nodded, her whole face shining at the thought of travelling and seeing even more of the strange new world that was her home. "Where will we go first, do you think? South? Or north? Or— Peter, just imagine! There might be any number of strange things we've yet to see, you know. Other creatures and— and things."

"There might well be," Peter agreed, smiling at his sister's sudden enthusiasm. "But I can't think it would be very good manners for you to show up unwashed like this. Perhaps, if you really can't bear to have your— your lady looking after you, you might ask Susan. You really do need a wash."

"I know," Lucy agreed, wholly uncombative. "Only I don't want Susan, please, Peter; she pokes my neck when she washes it."

"All right, then," Peter smiled, "not Susan. But somebody, Lucy, and I think you had better start now; by the time we set sail, it might be best if it's become something of a habit."

And Lucy, though she could make no promises, solemnly agreed to try.

O0O0O0O

As it happened, getting into the bathing habit (and getting over her squeamishness at being attended by Hilda, who was, for all that she did insist on helping Lucy dress, a very nice sort of Dwarf) was not the principal focus of Lucy's month. It happened that there were so many other more important and exciting things going on that Lucy simply had no time to fuss over being washed (which was just as well, since when Susan found out how long it had been since Lucy had bathed, she threatened to do far worse than poke Lucy's neck if the little girl persisted in refusing to take a bath).

Peter had spent some considerable time going over the correspondence he and Lucy had read, sorting them into categories that were arranged according to location. Each kingdom or territory had its own separate list of names and pile of letters to go along with it, and Susan had spent an entire day carefully noting each property that was being claimed, then marking it on a map of Narnia. By the end of the day her shoulders and hand were cramped and her eyes were sore, but the satisfaction she drew from studying her meticulous list was unparalleled.

So it was that, with Susan's list and map laid out between them, the four monarchs spent one drizzly, mostly-grey afternoon in early summer studying the names of each place, and applying the lessons they had all been taking in history, politics and geography to get a better understanding of just what they were in for.

"This lot here," Peter slid two sets of letters into the centre of the table, "are from the South. The bulk, of course, are from Archenland, but we have a few from Calormen, too; mostly the Western provinces, for some reason."

"Oh," Susan sat forward a bit, "that will be because the Western provinces are the least closely-tied to the Tisroc —that's what they call the ruler there— and because the Western provinces were the ones that received those few Narnians who did venture that far south."

"Yes, that's right," Peter smiled at his sister, "you and Ed focused on the southern parts in your studies, didn't you? Well, that's handy, then . . . did the Tisroc not want to harbour Narnian fugitives when the winter started?"

"It was more, I think, that the Narnians didn't want to appeal to the Tisroc," Edmund admitted. "From what I've learned, we've enjoyed tenuous relations with Calormen in the past . . . of course, it's a new Tisroc now, so that may change for the better."

"We shall see soon enough," Peter decided, and slid forward another group of papers. "These are for the North and the East; a lot of islands, really, and most of them are Narnian . . . I think what they call protectorates. That is, they're more or less under our command, but it's a very loose and distant sort of command. The winter didn't affect them, and the number of Narnians who fled to the isles is about equal to the number who fled to Archenland and Calormen."

"Then why are there more letters for the islands?" Lucy wanted to know, poking at the much taller stacks Peter had indicated.

"Because those who fled south were mostly families," Peter explained. "Parents with children who couldn't risk a sea journey travelled to Archenland. It made for the same number of people, but they had fewer properties between them; you see?"

Lucy did, and nodded, satisfied. She added, however, that she did not see how Peter expected them to travel in two directions at once. "And that's what we'll have to do, isn't it?" she concluded. "If we want to get this business finished by next summer, that is . . . that's a _lot_ of paper, Peter!"

Peter agreed that is was, but said that he had a proposal to make. "If," he explained, "we want to get these interviews and such completed in time, I think it might be best if we did it all at once."

"Well," Susan said doubtfully, "yes, but . . ."

"But," Peter concluded, "the only way to do that is if we split up."

"Split— oh, Peter," Susan sat forward, alarmed, "I don't think that's advisable, do you? We none of us know what we're doing yet, really; I can't imagine having to conduct something so important as an interview on my own."

"No, we couldn't split up entirely," Peter assured her. "But I thought if we split into two groups, we could go in two different directions and . . . see to things that way. It's the only way to be fair to everyone, if you think about it; we haven't time to leave and return to Narnia and then set off again before it's too cold to travel, so we'd lose a whole winter of meeting-time and on top of that, whatever place we don't visit first might feel they're less important than the other, don't you see?"

They saw, but none of them were very much comforted for seeing it.

"How— how would we decide who goes to which place?" Lucy asked. "I mean, you and Edmund have been meeting with all the diplomats who come in from other countries, and you've been studying policy and things so much more than Susan and I, so if you took Edmund, I really don't see that—"

"I want to go South."

It was Susan who spoke. Her words were so sudden and her voice so strong that they even startled the young Queen who spoke them; when the other three swivelled to stare at her, they found she was pink-cheeked and surprised at herself.

"Susan?" Peter said, and made it a question.

"I beg your pardon," she stammered, "I didn't meant to interrupt Lucy, but . . . I want to go South."

"Why?" Lucy blinked, not at all minding being interrupted. Susan, even more pink about the face, said she didn't know.

"I just want to see Archenland, and the desert, and . . . everything. I'm not sure why. Every time I read about it in lessons, it just . . . if I have to choose, I want it to be the South."

"Well," said Peter, "I don't see why not."

"And actually," Lucy spoke up suddenly, too, "I think . . . I'd like to go to the East. We've never been out on the sea yet, have we? And King Lune gave us that lovely ship as a coronation gift . . . may I go East?"

Again, now smiling a little, Peter said he didn't see why not. Then he looked over to Edmund, who was staring at the letters on the table with a sort of fixed reflection that was a new habit of his. "Ed?" he prompted, and his brother raised his head.

"South," he said. "I'm for the South; Archenland, and the Western provinces. But I think," very thoughtfully, "that you already knew that."

"Knew," Peter grinned, "or hoped. And yes, if you must know, I'm hankering to get a look at the Seven Isles, myself. So," he looked around the table as all four of them began to understand just what they were proposing, and how big and important it really was, "it appears . . . we are going abroad."

O0O0O0O

They were, indeed, going abroad, but it naturally wasn't as easy as all that. When you are Kings and Queens, travelling is never as easy as simply deciding you want to set sail and see what you can find. It takes a great deal of planning and consideration, and there are all sorts of messages and letters to be sent ahead of you so that kings and dignitaries know you are coming, and won't be embarrassed to find themselves caught unawares when you turn up. Once these had been sent, all four Kings and Queens applied themselves to a rigorous schedule of lessons, devoting their efforts to learning all they could about the areas they were going to visit and the names and histories of the families who had fled there before the winter.

"I never knew," Lucy reflected one midsummer afternoon, as she and Peter took a break from a particularly gruelling quizzing-session on the intricacies of government on the Lone Islands, "that a person could have fun learning something even when it wasn't particularly easy."

"You're having fun, then?" Peter asked, half his mind still focused on the complex table of precedence that their guests would have to follow. Lucy, curling up in her chair like a small kitten and poking at the heavy book in front of her, said that she was.

"It's not history like we learned before," she said, only half-aware of what "before" it was that she spoke of. "It's different. We're learning about people who are _our _people; this must be what it's like for Kings and Queens to study history, don't you think? It must mean more to them, because they're learning about what their parents and grandparents did, and not just people who are dead and gone. That's why it's so interesting; we're actually going to meet the children and grandchildren of these people. They're going to live in our kingdom, and be our friends, and . . . oh," feeling a trifle foolish at her own explanation, "I don't know. It just makes me happy."

And Peter, smiling at his sister over a list of notes he had compiled as they were lectured by a pair of anxious Ministers, said he was glad to hear it, for he was happy too.

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** I have been fussing over this chapter for longer than I care to think of, much less admit. It's just such a lot of set-up and so very little action that I found I couldn't get into it as easily as I do the chapters where things actually _happen_! It's necessary, of course, to have this one before we have the next one, but for some reason it just didn't want to be written! Particular thanks and apologies are owed to Katie, who has patiently listened to me complain about it for most of last week, and I hope this will do to be going on with until we can get to the actual "doings" of it all!

Up next: The Eastern Sea and the Southern Sun, wherein our Kings and Queens set forth.


	3. The Eastern Sea and the Southern Sun

The Eastern Sea and the Southern Sun

O0O0O0O

On the late summer day they had set as that on which they would take their leave of Cair Paravel, the Kings and Queens of Narnia rose with the dawn. It wasn't when most of them would have preferred to rise, but when you have to set sail you are obedient to the whim of the tide.

Of course, all necessary preparations for the two departures had already been made. The Queens had attempted to help pack, but the intricacies and —if one were to be perfectly honest— the wealth of boring details that were involved in packing for diplomatic voyages soon had their heads spinning. At the urging of the newly appointed Head Housekeeper and several of her most determined staff, the Queens had instead retreated to the council chambers, where they had busied themselves perfecting Peter's effort at a sorting job.

By the time the documents —letters, patents, petitions and all such like— were packed for the voyage, the Queens had sorted them into categories, sub categories and (thanks to one rainy day and one too many games of charades) sub-sub categories. Both agreed that Peter would possibly have a small fit on trying to sort through their over-sorted triumph, but somehow they managed to keep the thought from keeping them awake at nights.

For their part, the Kings had locked themselves in their rooms with books the Queens had already read, but they, closeted as they had been with King Lune and various other delegates, had not had time to peruse. The tricky side of diplomacy, you see, is that each country has its own little quirks of diplomacy that visiting diplomats and royalty must follow to the letter to avoid giving offence, and the Narnian monarchs had only some few months to understand what others had years to learn. The books were likely to be the only instruction they would receive on the topic, and so they had devoted themselves to reading every word as many times as they could.

Now, mostly awake, the morning sun warming their faces, the four monarchs led an odd assortment of courtiers and palace staff down the hill that led from Cair Paravel to the docks that housed the —currently single ship that composed the— Royal Fleet. Lucy, at least, seemed pleased to be abroad at such an early hour.

"Shall we write each other?" she wondered, as they made their way to the docks in company with their envoy and what creatures could be mustered for the send-off. "I mean, I _want _to write very much, but I don't know what sort of postal system they have between countries, you see . . . will we send things by ship, do you think, or do they have birds who carry those sorts of things? Is there some sort of sorting depot? Will they open our letters and cut up bits of them, the way they did . . ." she paused, tipping her head to one side. "Who did that, anyhow?" she wondered, and the others found they couldn't say, though they, too, had faint memories of receiving such letters, with names and places blacked out.

"I expect that, failing all else, we can always send a messenger," Peter decided, resting a comforting hand on his little sister's shoulder. "Don't worry, Lucy— we aren't going to the ends of the world, after all. We're only going to . . . well, if you want to see it this way, we're only going to pay a few calls on our neighbours."

"Yes, except they're so very far away," Lucy reflected, watching for a moment as the toes of her slippers appeared and disappeared from under the hem of her unadorned travelling gown. Then she lifted her chin to face the sea, and quite forgot about her feet. The somewhat trimmed-back, still badly overgrown street that had once been the main thoroughfare of the village was uncomfortable under the soft soles of her slippers, but the little Queen barely felt the dig of stone or the prick of thorn, so fastened were her thoughts on the sparkling sea that lay before them, the sunrise washing the waves the colour of molten silver.

"Oh," said Susan, and there was a new, soft note in her voice, "oh, I have never seen it like this before . . ."

Nor, it proved, had any of the others. As one they came to a standstill, staring at the water in rapt fascination. All around them the members of their court and the envoy did the same, and for the space of a moment all was still, with only the lightest breeze finding its way in off the water. The wind danced across Susan's face like a caress, making the girl shut her eyes for just a moment that she might enjoy it the more, and played with the collar of Edmund's doublet, tickling him dreadfully. That same breeze caught at Lucy's skirt and ruffled Peter's hair; Peter found himself smiling, and Lucy felt her heart pick up speed of its own accord, as if reacting in recognition of something it knew that she did not.

"Why," she said, sounding surprised, "this is going to be _good_, isn't it?"

Her sister and brothers smiled at her, but none of them, not even Susan, questioned the ambiguity of her words, for it was becoming clear to them that this would be the way of it. It would not always be fun, or easy, or even particularly rewarding all the time, but whatever else it was, it was going to be good.

"Are you nervous, darling?" Susan asked of Lucy, as the four reached the lowered gangplank and Peter turned to murmur a few words of instruction to his brother. Lucy bit her bottom lip and considered.

"I . . . a little, I think," she decided. "After all, it's going to be a lot of time at sea and a lot of time to . . . to imagine things. You know," blushingly, "all the sorts of things that could go wrong. I don't really want to imagine that sort of thing."

"Well, then," Susan gave both of her sister's hands a little squeeze, "just don't, dear. Any time you start, ask Peter to tell you a story, or— or you tell him one. After all, where's the sense in worrying about what can go wrong before you even arrive?"

Lucy saw and acknowledged the wisdom of this, and thanked Susan for sharing her thoughts by flinging her arms firmly round her sister's middle and giving her the sort of squeeze that leaves its object breathless, but quite convinced of her vital importance in the life of the one doing the squeezing. Susan, thus convinced, flushed pleasantly, and gently returned the embrace.

"There, now," she said, and somehow words that even a week ago would have sounded affected and grown up now simply suited her, "I think you'll do very well, Lucy, I really do. Believe me," she caught her sister's hand in hers, "they cannot help but love you."

Thusly reassured, Lucy let Susan turn her around to face Edmund, who gave her a hug of his own.

"You keep him in line, won't you?" he teased her, and Lucy, at once all over smiles and dimples, promised she would do her best.

"I won't let him be too noble," she decided, prompting a sudden burst of laughter from her brother.

"Very good," he decided, and stepped back as Susan clutched Peter's hands in hers and urged him to know his limits.

"It wouldn't do," she decided, "to have our High King run himself into the ground before we were even here a year, now, would it?" Then she stepped back to stand at Edmund's side, leaving Peter and Lucy quite alone at the foot of the gangplank.

"Best of everything to you, then," Peter said, and Susan was conscious of a sudden current of uncertainty in her brother's voice. If Edmund heard it he didn't let on, and simply said he wished the same to Peter and Lucy. But Lucy heard something slightly strained in what Peter said, tilted her little face up in an effort to see her brother's face, and suddenly, decisively, caught her brother's hand in hers.

"Don't worry about us," she said boldly, addressing her remarks to all who gathered to see them off, "we'll be _quite _all right, you'll see." And such was the confidence in the little girl's voice that it did not occur to anyone who stood on the dock that day to doubt it could be so.

That issue settled to everybody's satisfaction, the young Queen and the High King proceeded up the gangplank onto the exquisite ship that had been given to them by King Lune. It was as delightful a galleon as even the most powerful king could have asked for, and with much fanfare and very little actual ceremony had been christened the _Splendour Hyaline_— for, as Susan observed, if the vessel was to sail on seas as clear as theirs, she must have a name as perfectly clear to match them.

The crew of the _Splendour Hyaline_ was already on board, of course, and had been since the night before, ensuring that all was in readiness for the voyage. Only once their King and Queen were on board would the assortment of creatures who had been appointed to serve as envoy move forward as well, and take their place on the ship.

I think it important here to address the picture made by these solemn little creatures who, at the time, composed the court of Cair Paravel. You probably would have thought them very odd looking, and they would quite possibly not be your idea of how a proper Royal Court ought to look; at the very best, I daresay you might have thought them rather quaint, and might perhaps even have tried to pet them, as one does animals in our world.

What you must understand, however, is that Talking Animals in Narnia are nothing like the dumb beasts you find in our own world (and in Narnia, too; for not all the beasts there can speak). They are accorded every dignity and respect that is offered to humans, and as the children had by this point become quite accustomed to viewing these beasts and other creatures as simply their loyal subjects, and not like animals at all, they did not think there was anything the least odd in seeing, for instance, a stately pair of Centaurs stepping smartly up the gangplank, followed by a strutting and extremely officious Duck. Indeed, Susan very solemnly waved her handkerchief at them, as you would do to friends or family preparing to take a long sea journey, and it seemed a fitting and fine thing for her to do.

Then Susan and Edmund stood together on the docks, the remnants of their odd little court clustered all about them as they watched the _Splendour Hyaline_ put up her sails. The gentle breeze that had blown in off the sea had already reversed, and was growing in strength, sweeping down from the hills behind them and out over the Eastern Sea, filling the sails of the ship and conveying the delicate craft on her way out to open water.

"They'll . . . be safe, won't they?" Susan asked softly, and felt Edmund's hand close firmly round her own. It was a rare thing for her most solemn brother to express so much affection in such a short period of time, and if she hadn't been so caught up in trying not to worry about her sister and other brother, Susan might have commented on it. As it was, she barely even noticed her hand was held until Edmund gave a gentle squeeze.

"I trust they will," he said, and the strength that shone through his uncertainty was just what Susan needed to bolster her courage. With a sudden new steel to her backbone and fresh resolve in her heart, Susan turned away from the Eastern Sea and faced the direction in which the wind had come— up, over the hills, toward the west.

O0O0O0O

As the southern-bound company led by Susan and Edmund were not venturing nearly as far afield as that company led by the pair's brother and sister, something less in the way of preparation was required to ready their envoy. Preparations for that journey were not even begun until after Lucy and Peter had left Narnia, and even so it took only a little over a week to set everything perfectly in order. After all, very few of the members of their party needed to ride —very few of them even could— so only a few horses were required for the journey, and of course the provisions required amounted to a single meal. All the company's effects were assembled in the castle yard the morning of their departure and the company itself was readied by midmorning. Before the sun had reached its zenith Susan and Edmund had mounted and led their own modest envoy first west, along the newly-cleared Land Road, and then south, through forest trails that still wanted some further tending to make them wholly passable.

"My only fear," Susan confided as she and Edmund rode abreast, "is that we will come across some fallen tree or some such that it is not within our power to shift, and we will not be able to find a way around it. Then we'll be forced to turn back and— goodness, Edmund, what can be so funny?" For Edmund's face was pulled into that expression that is particular to those who are fighting to hold back a burst of mirth.

"_You_ are," he admitted, turning an apologetic smile on Susan. "Or, rather, your words . . . did I not hear you just one week ago counsel Lucy on the folly of worrying about what might or might not lie ahead?"

"You did," Susan smiled quietly. "Of course, I cautioned her against worrying too much before she arrived; our journey will not take nearly as long as theirs, so perhaps if any worrying is to be done, we should do it now."

The remark was so frivolous, so very unlike his sister, that it took Edmund a long moment to even realise what she had said. Once he had, however, the young King's face split in a sudden grin.

"Susan," he laughed, "I think you'll need to warn me if you plan to be fun. I'm afraid I'm not used to it just yet."

The remark was not the sort that could be let to pass. With a cry of mock indignation Susan at once jostled her horse closer to Edmund's— a dangerous trick to play at under most circumstances, but even more so if you don't know the tempers of both horses involved, and are not fully aware of what you are doing. Susan, however, had taken to her horse in much the same way as a fish returns to water, with all joy and such inborn affinity that it had rather startled the Centaur engaged to instruct all four monarchs in the sport. She also knew the tempers of both her horse and Edmund's, and so while the equine pair did lay back their ears in warning of their well-bred displeasure, they understood the act for the playful tactic it was, rather than an act of true aggression, and did not retaliate as many horses would have done.

Of course, the act was not wholly without aggression of any sort, but this came in the form of a swat delivered from Susan to Edmund, whose laughing countenance changed to one of bright-eyed alertness.

"Have a care," he called warningly, "else I shall have you unseated, and your mare for my own!"

"Wouldst duel a lady?" Susan's haughty retort rang through the wood around them with all the authority innate to a Queen, and so comfortable was she in her speech and role that none seemed even to notice what she said, nor the manner in which she said it. Indeed, Susan's slip into the old, more familiar style of speech that is little used in our world nowadays had come on her so naturally, she scarcely even noticed it; yet in Narnia, as it once was in our world, 'thou' and 'thee' are still used as the most informal and intimate forms of address, and it seemed Susan's tongue was aware of something she herself was not.

Susan, after all, did not know this manner of speech in the way that people of your acquaintance may know sums or conjugation, and yet somehow she knew that the phrasing fit the situation; that a friendly bit of jesting between brother and sister called not for high formality, but for the friendliest and most relaxed of terms. I cannot say for certain how it was that she came to know it, but it is my belief that the Narnian air and perhaps the Southern sun were at work within her; after all, in a world so newly restored to its proper self there is often an extra sort of growth and magic lingering about. Perhaps it was some of this fresh young magic that found its way into Susan, once so reluctant to be made Queen of her new home, and now, suddenly, longing very much to be a part of it.

Edmund, his eyes flashing with pure, boyish delight, reined his young charger back with care and a skill that belied the weeks it had been since necessity first forced him into the horse's back.

"You try me, Madam," he warned, his eyes laughing. Susan, enchanted at the opportunity to see how best to keep her keyed-up mare walking smartly on the path beside Edmund's equally agitated mount, spared her brother a laugh of her own and a smile such as he had never seen on her before. It startled the boy badly, and he faltered in his careful governance of his horse just long enough for the creature to catch the bit between his teeth and give Edmund the devil of a time reining him back in again.

This chore took up the better portion of ten minutes, during which time the company continued in their progress through the wood and Susan, seeing her brother had grave matters at hand, quieted her own mare with some effort and returned to the precise little trot at which they had started their journey. This left Edmund free to contemplate what had just happened to both of them, and the startling effect it had had on his sister.

Laughing and joking is something that many siblings must take for granted, and yet between Edmund and Susan, it had never seemed to exist. Peter and Lucy, the more readily merry of the four, were usually able to coax smiles from the more sombre pair, but between Edmund and Susan solemn discussion was more often the order of the day. That easy camaraderie that marks the happiest of families had been denied to older sister and younger brother, and until this moment, Edmund had never given it a great deal of thought. Perhaps the Narnian air was working on him, as well, or perhaps it had simply been the sight of his sister's smile —the chance to see on Susan's face the sort of unbridled joy that was normally only seen on Lucy's— that had shocked him into the realisation how very little Susan did seem to celebrate; she had, he realised, always seemed afraid to be glad.

He wasn't sure what could have changed that for her over the course of mere months, but now, watching Susan as they made their way through the woods, toward the Pass, he realised it was true; something had definitely changed in her since they had arrived, and this discovery, he found, was cause for much wonder.

Had Lucy and Peter been there to see their brother at that moment, I am afraid they both would have been tempted to laugh; so wrapped up in contemplation of the change in Susan was Edmund that it never even occurred to him to realise she wasn't the only one of the sovereigns who was no longer what she had been when they had first arrived in Narnia.

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** Not much to say except one more down, goodness knows how many more to go! Also, it is technically Saturday here so I am in fact technically a day behind in posting this, and am very sorry for that, but I am afraid paying work got in the way of fun! It happens sometimes, unfortunately . . .

Up next: The Northern Sky and the Western Wind, wherein Kings and Queens continue to travel, and arrive at their destinations with almost no difficulty.


	4. The Northern Sky and the Western Wind

The Northern Sky and the Western Wind

O0O0O0O

A sea voyage is a marvellous thing, no matter how often you have taken them. For Lucy and Peter, whose time at sea had consisted mostly of two short jaunts in holiday steamers, it was even more marvellous than it is for most. The summer sun over head was brilliant and warming, and as the ship made its journey, the sailors, Ministers and monarchs grew vaguely brown as they spent their time on decks. Lucy's fair hair lightened, and she and Peter both acquired freckles on their noses as they explored the upper decks and acquainted themselves with the crews.

Below decks, too, was given its fair share of exploration. The _Splendour Hyaline_ had been fitted with every necessity by the thoughtful King Lune and his wife Queen Lora, and when they were not closeted in the Captain's quarters with their ministers, going over the papers they had brought with them for their purpose, the monarchs busied themselves exploring every nook and cranny of their ship.

"I would not have thought it could be so comfortable," Peter confessed, as he and Lucy emerged from a thorough investigation of the crew's quarters. "I mean, one is always hearing how dashed uncomfortable life at sea is, and it's enough to make a fellow a little ill just to hear it, but here, now," he nodded at the low door Lucy had carefully pulled to behind them, "that's not so bad at all, is it? None of that stacking them four men deep, the way you hear about in . . . places," he finished vaguely, and, as Lucy led the way back up to the top deck, he tried to remember in what places he had heard of such things.

This did not appear to be a point of grave concern for Lucy, however. Rather than asking her brother who had been filling his head with such ideas, she dropped to the floor almost as soon as she topped the stairs, seeming to find this posture necessary to effect the proper greeting of the ship's cat, a dainty little calico queen with all the charmingly imperious manner of an Empress.

"Isn't she a darling, Peter?" she beamed, kneading the delighted animal behind her silken ears. "Look, she likes me!"

"It would be a cat of poor taste that did not," Peter decided, bending down to offer his own caresses to the little animal, taking her from delighted to positively rapturous. "She is a lovely little creature, though."

"And such a purr!" Lucy marvelled, and such is the way of cats that it was not long before Peter found himself persuaded to join his sister on the floor of the narrow ship's corridor, the hysterically-purring feline cuddled between them. "Such a darling," Lucy cooed, "such a sweetheart."

Peter, smiling first at his sister and then at the cat, found he had to agree. Softening his own voice he addressed the cat as well, and found himself regarded through a pair of clear, bright green eyes as the cat reached out and batted at his hand with one paw. Even animals who cannot talk can manage to make their needs known, and Peter, laughing, still using the same soft, gentle, slightly silly tone, obediently tickled the little cat's ears.

"This is nice," Lucy sighed, after some time had passed with all attention focused on the cat. "If it can be like this, I won't mind it so much, I think."

"If it can be like what?" Peter wondered, looking up from the near-comatose little animal, one dainty calico head cradled in his palm. "What don't you think you will mind?"

"Well," Lucy blushed a little, "I hope you won't tell anybody, Peter, but . . . for quite some time at first, I wasn't sure I wanted to be a Queen, really."

"Oh?" Peter tickled the little cat under her chin, and was rewarded with an especially thunderous purr. "I didn't know that, Lu."

"No, I know; I didn't mean for you to." Lucy wrinkled her snub nose thoughtfully. "It didn't seem very right of me to say it, somehow; I don't know why. Maybe I saw how well you and Edmund and Susan seemed to be managing everything, and . . . oh, I don't know. I just didn't think it would be very adult of me to say I wasn't certain I liked it."

"But Lucy," Peter regarded his sister with genuine warmth and amusement, "you aren't adult. You aren't even anything close. You are a very little girl. Although," quickly, "one of the nicest little girls I know."

"Oh, I know," Lucy scrunched her nose again, and the smattering of freckles she had begun to accumulate during the course of the voyage rearranged themselves charmingly. "But I'm not just a little girl, am I? I'm Queen, too. I have charge of a kingdom. I feel I ought to at least try to be a little grown-up about it, and complaining didn't seem to be a very grown-up thing to do."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Peter said, thinking of some of the diplomats he had received over the past few months. "I think a lot of grown-ups can be pretty childish at times."

"But not the best ones," Lucy said gravely, blue eyes solemn, and Peter agreed that no, usually not the best ones.

"But you must remember, Lucy; you may be Queen, but you're not an adult. So perhaps you can be the best Queen and the very best little girl you can be, and still not have to be entirely grown up right away, don't you think?" he suggested, and Lucy, though still clearly unconvinced, said perhaps he was right.

"But still," she decided, "I don't think I'll mind it, even the having to be grown-up part, if it can be like this, sometimes."

"If what can?" Peter asked gently, and Lucy nodded in the direction of the cat her brother held, its little head now pillowed in the palm of the High King's hand as it slumbered.

"If sometimes even when we are Kings and Queens and are adult and solemn and very boring, and more like the sort of people you read about in books than the sort of people you can just meet and like, things can still be like this. If sometimes we don't have to be Kings and Queens and grand and grown up, but can just sit on the floor with a cat or a dog and . . . and just be as we are now. If we can be like that, even if it's only sometimes, I won't mind having to be adult. Do you see?"

Peter, smiling at his sister, said he thought he did.

"I shouldn't wonder if sometimes it could be that way," he added. "I don't mean to say it won't be a lot of politics and diplomacy and running the kingdom and keeping up relations with others, mind you, but . . . I don't think that's all it will be."

"Good," Lucy said, and was at once all over smiles again. "Now I suppose we have to get up and do the diplomacy part, don't we?"

"We do," Peter admitted. "We have those plans to meet with the Ministers, after all, and we promised we wouldn't be late. The Captain says with these winds we can look to arrive at the Lone Islands by this time tomorrow, and there are still some names we need to go over before we get there."

Lucy nodded, moving to slide the cat off her lap, but a gesture from Peter stopped her.

"Although," he smiled, "I think . . . perhaps we might be able to bring the cat." And the smile on Lucy's face at hearing those words was all the confirmation Peter needed that he had said the right thing.

O0O0O0O

"It grows cold." Susan's tone was calm, but something under her words hinted at the origins of concern. They had followed the trail for some hours now, and as the sun began to complete its descent in the sky, splashing gold across the lower heavens, the first of the twilight chill began to set in. The Queen drew her light cloak a little closer around her. "Edmund, how long did they say it would take us?"

"I can't— one moment." Edmund turned in his saddle, and looked back along the column. "Hi, Charon! How much farther, by your ken?"

Charon, a magnificent Stag, moved swiftly from his place behind two Centaurs to come abreast of the King and give his reply. "Not even a league, Sire. Nothing is wrong, I hope?"

"No, indeed," Edmund assured him. "The Queen's grace wished to determine the remaining length of our journey."

"It grows cold," Susan explained, this time with greater apology. Charon's noble, antlered head dipped in acknowledgment.

"Yes, of course; you human creatures have not the benefit of a double coat, such as we Beasts. Have you no more of your strange, flat fur to use?"

"You mean clothing?" Susan smiled, and the sunset warmed the expression still further. "Yes, I believe I have a cloak in my bag. Thank you, Charon, I only wished to know how far we were from the home of King Lune. This wood is not known to me as it is to you."

"Of course, Majesty," Charon was on the verge of inclining his head once more, when in an instant his whole frame stiffened. If you have ever seen a deer in the wild, you will know how it is; they know, somehow, that something is near, and they tense to listen for the slightest sound that will bid them flee. Charon, because he was a Talking Beast, would possibly not have fled in the manner of a dumb beast, but there was no mistaking his posture, and behind him a Leopard, who hunted deer for food, recognised it for what it was.

If you have never heard a scream of a wild cat, you cannot hope to understand what the scream of that Leopard meant to all who heard it. Terror, rage and primal power are embodied in the scream of a Leopard. Similarly, if you have never heard the scream of a horse struck by the clawed paw of a Great Cat, you will not be able understand the sound made by Susan's horse when the Leopard struck. Five red furrows cut into the mare's flank and she bolted in raw fear, forcing Susan to forget how cold she was in favour of bending her every effort to bringing her under control again.

Edmund, shocked and terrified, was on the verge of turning his horse to confront the Leopard when a shadowy figure dropped from the branches overhead onto the path, landing in the very spot where Susan's mare had been.

"Werewolf!" a nearby hound dog bayed. "Werewolf!" bayed another eager twenty. Hounds being hounds, they could not quite let it go until they had all gotten together, their velvety muzzles lifted to the crimson sky in full hunting chorus. "Were-were-were-were-werewoooolf!"

The Leopard, not given to multiple hunting cries, ignored the bays of the hounds and pounced, claws extended, fangs bared. The werewolf met it with a snarl and the Leopard retaliated in kind, savaging the attacker with tooth and claw as the column behind them surged up, guards skilfully cutting the King off from the thick of the fray, and forcing him back off the path.

"Majesty," one Dwarf shouted, "remove yourself!"

Edmund was on the verge of arguing when a horrible scream went up from the Leopard, and the King, feeling ill, backed his charger sharply off the path, into the trees and away from the battle.

"Sire!" Charon, fighting his every inborn instinct, quivered frantically beside his King. "If you will follow me, I can lead you to safety."

"But— Susan," Edmund said. "I don't know where she—"

"If she gives her horse her head, the mare will bear her back to the stables at the Cair," Charon said, his breathless panic rising with his voice. It is not in the nature of deer, Talking or otherwise, to stand still in the midst of danger, and Charon was fighting his very self in order to stay by the side of his King.

"Yes, but Susan might not know that!" Edmund looked distraught. "Charon, if you want to run, I want you to run ahead and find—"

"Your Majesty!" a Centaur came crashing through the underbrush, "your Majesty, the werewolf is dead. You must return to the path, and we must march forward with all speed; there may be more about."

"What, more werewolves?" Edmund paled. "Susan—"

"Her Majesty is safe; the Hounds were sent ahead to overtake her. She awaits us under guard farther along the path, and it is imperative that we move to join her. King Lune's castle is closer than the Cair, and dusk will be on us soon; it is the time when they come out to hunt."

"Werewolves," Edmund stammered, as they rejoined the company on the path, "have a— a preferred hunting time?"

"Not werewolves, your Majesty," the Centaur clarified, jostling Edmund's horse to face the right direction and harrying it into a gallop, "all of Her forces. The remnants of the Witch's army that hide in the Western Wood hunt at twilight. They prey on small animals, largely, but if travellers are caught unaware and undefended . . . hi, Lobie!" as they rounded a bend at full gallop and were confronted by the leader of the hound pack. "Her Majesty bides well?"

"Safe as houses, Pollus," Lobie panted, wheeling and breaking into a long, low run. "My pack, you won't find a finer, not for anything. Hi hi hi hi!" he yelped, ploughing through the pack of furry bodies. "Hi hi hi! On, then! On with you!" And the pack all wheeled in joyous flight, tongues lolling, baying merrily for the pure delight of running full tilt down the path, pursuing the distant scent of stone, water, stabled horses and the humans who awaited them there.

"Edmund," Susan crouched low over the neck of her mare as they rode, the hooves, paws and feet of all their mounts and Ministers swallowing up the ground at a speed neither King nor Queen would ever have dreamed possible, "Edmund, what was it? The Leopard struck my Norry, and . . . and she simply bolted, I've never felt anything like it. You can't imagine— what was it?"

This was not whispered, as you might expect, or even said in a low voice, but rather almost shouted. With the din their party made, the dogs baying, the great Cats uttering the occasional vicious snarl to keep the dumb horses coursing at top speed as well as to warn off any prospective attackers, Susan found it necessary to shout simply to make herself heard. Edmund, also hunched over his horse's neck, raising himself in the stirrups as much as he could, strained to hear his sister's query.

"Werewolf!" he shouted back, and Susan grew ashen in the lingering beams of the setting sun.

"Gracious," she breathed, and felt as ill as Edmund had at the sight and sound of the Leopard battling the evil thing. "But— but Edmund," raising her voice again, "what became of it?"

"Leopard," Edmund called back. "Leopard fought it . . . killed it, I suppose."

"And the Leopard?" Susan wondered, and Edmund, paling as well, realised he didn't know.

"The Leopard is no more, Majesty," the Centaur took it upon himself to answer. "He died in defence of his Queen, as he would have wished it."

"Oh, no . . ." Susan now felt more than slightly ill. For just a moment she forgot the surge of the mare beneath her, and the yip-yip-yip of the dog pack that swarmed around them. She had not even known the Leopard's name; she began to feel queasy. However, when riding a horse at an all-out gallop there is really no time to be sick, and with great Cats snarling and dogging the heels of a horse who has just been swatted by one of their number the horse is unlikely to cease to gallop any time soon, so Susan was forced, for want of option, to conquer her stomach and simply struggle to stay on.

If the home of King Lune had been any farther off than it was, it is unlikely the company could have kept up that pace. As it was, everybody was beginning to flag as they topped the ridge that overlooked the lovely little castle, and by the time they reached the gate —the guards had already turned out in great numbers at the sound of the baying dogs, and raised the portcullis once they recognised the Narnian standard— nearly all were ready to drop.

"My friends!" King Lune himself came bustling across the flagstones of the inner courtyard to reach his hands up to the two pale, weary young Narnian monarchs. "My dear friends, what distress is this? Quickly, gentleman," to the two nearest guards, "help Her Majesty from her horse. She is close to fainting."

Susan was in fact not so close to fainting as she was to being sick, and not nearly so close to fainting as was Edmund, whose head had begun to swim. But one cannot accuse a King of being ready to faint, so King Lune simply made sure two guards were on hand to steady the boy, and kept a close eye on him as he phrased hasty welcomes, and posed anxious questions.

"A werewolf!" he cried, dismayed. "And in the border lands, no less; I will send out a hunting party at once. This cannot continue. Madam," he turned to address Susan, who had found her spine and gotten her feet firmed under her once more, "this cannot have been but a terror to you; if it pleases you, I can see that a tray is brought to your room so you may rest."

"His Majesty is most kind," Susan murmured, all the while keeping a watchful eye on her brother, "but if it pleases our kind host, I am sure I want nothing more than to see to my— Edmund!" For the King's knees had wobbled dangerously, and he began to keel over.

Guards at once rushed to bear Edmund up, and Susan busied herself with helping her brother sit down and take deep breaths.

"Well," he mumbled, "I'm a prize fool, to be sure."

"No you aren't," Susan scolded, "you're a boy who's always had a weak stomach when it comes to blood. Do you remember that one lacrosse match when the ball hit your friend's nose, and the blood made you fall down?"

Edmund did, and yet at the same time he didn't. The blood he remembered, and the sick, woozy rush that had sent him tumbling he remembered, too, but lacrosse itself was a mystery, and where he would have played such a thing . . . But there was Susan, bending over him, her expression deeply concerned, and she was helping him up, and passing him to the guards, and King Lune was saying perhaps everybody could do with a good rest.

And Edmund decided that any King who could so gravely dismiss the weaknesses of one much younger than he as if they could have happened to a man of any age would be a worthy and welcome friend indeed.

O0O0O0O

Given the vagaries of sea travel and the distance that separated Narnia from her protectorate islands, it should come as no surprise to learn that even though they left a week earlier, it still took the company on board the _Splendour Hyaline_ much longer to reach their destination than it did Susan and Edmund. They were quite some time at sea before Lucy and Peter made a pet of the ship's cat, and were informed that their destination was close to hand, and yet none of that time was passed in tedium. Even up to the very last hour of their journey, as the Lone Islands came into view and the Narnian sails were hoisted from the mizzenmast, there were excitements to be had.

"Peter!" Lucy flew across the desk of the ship to grab hold of the railing and push herself up, "Peter, look at those— what are those, there?"

Peter, who was just finishing a highly technical and therefore largely one-sided conversation with a member of the crew concerning the mechanics of the ship's rigging, turned to smile at his sister. "Have a care, Lucy," he urged at the young Queen, crossing to join her at the rail. "I don't want our first ocean voyage to end with me fishing you out of the water."

"Oh, I won't fall in," Lucy said impatiently, her attention still fastened on something in the waves. "Look, Peter, what are those, d'you think?"

Peter, leaning on the rail, followed his sister's gaze to a small eruption in the water, where a sleek, dark shape shot into the air with a sort of contagious exuberance.

"I can't make it out," he admitted. "It's not human, surely, is it?"

"No, it can't be. But it's so much bigger than a fish . . . would a sailor know, do you think?"

A sailor was found, and did know. "Porpoises, Majesty!" he announced. "Wondrous cunning creature, the porpoise. Lookit the little 'un take his jumps, now."

Lucy looked, and delighted in the sight. Peter, too, found himself smiling, and his sister said she almost fancied she had once heard a poem about a porpoise.

"A droll little rhyme," she said, resting her chin on her hands almost dreamily. "There was a little girl in an odd place, and there were turtles, too, I think, and possibly a lobster . . . but that was ever so long ago, now. I can't think it really matters, anymore."

Then the Queen of Narnia turned from the rail, begged the pardon of the King and the sailor, and excused herself to her quarters to prepare to dock.

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** Just an idle, unimportant heads-up— I am debating switching the title of this chapter with the title of the previous. Just . . . because.

Also, although it is unlikely people really want to know, here are a few notes on porpoises! It is likely that the animals Lucy saw were really dolphins, not porpoises; dolphins are more acrobatic and much less wary than porpoises, and are far more likely to be seen leaping near ships. However, despite several biological differences between the two animals, sailors of old generally used the term "porpoise" to refer to dolphins and porpoises alike; hence the use of "porpoise" by the sailor on the _Splendour Hyaline_.

Up next: Affairs of the Stomach and of State, wherein lavish greetings are made, and politics are discussed in a mostly interesting manner.


	5. Affairs of the Stomach and of State

Affairs of the Stomach and of State

O0O0O0O

The Lone Islands, as you should have been taught in school, are a cluster of three islands kept, in the time of King Peter, in varying states of population. The principal island is called Doorn; it is the central one, and became principal purely for reasons of location. Felimath is held to be the prettiest of the three, but it is too low-lying to house great numbers on any but its inner shores, and so is used principally by shepherds for the raising of sheep. Avra, the least comely of the three, was compensated for its lack of aesthetic appeal by being made the seat of government (there are those who said, and sometimes still do, that being made a seat of government is a poor sort of compensation, but the government at the time was a nice sort, and so Avra did very well for itself, as islands go).

It was for Avra that the Narnian party sailed, the pristine white sails of the _Splendour Hyaline_ catching stiff summer breezes until the hills of Doorn cut off all such winds, and they put out their oars and made for the channel. Navigating the channel wasn't nearly as difficult a business as Peter and Lucy had thought it would be, and they stood together at the rail in full dress regalia (a much prettier and nicer sort of finery than we are used to wearing in our world) to watch the progress with great delight. Small tugs came out to help them complete the journey, sturdy little craft manned by strong, broad-shouldered sailors who doffed their funny little caps when they saw Lucy watching them. The little girl promptly waved back, and a cheer went up from the shores of the harbour; she had not realised so many people were watching, and, turning quite red, pulled her hand back quickly and stood at Peter's side in silence as they dropped anchor, and the gangplank was lowered for the King, the Queen, and the company to disembark.

As she descended the gangplank on Peter's arm, Lucy tried hard to remember to smile. It wasn't that she wasn't glad to have arrived; she was actually brimming with excitement. But there were so very many _faces _staring at her— she hadn't realised there would be so many people. It was one thing to wave at a hard-working sailor, straining his back at the oars of a small tug, but to see a whole population turned out in her honour . . . after spending so many months seeing no human faces but those of her brothers and sister and a very few diplomatic visitors, it came as a severe shock to be so suddenly confronted with such a lot of _people_.

"Peter . . ." she said in a very small voice. One slippered foot faltered, and for just a moment, her courage failed her. So many faces . . . but then her brother's free hand descended on hers where it rested on his arm, clasping it firmly.

"I'm here, Lucy," he said softly, and the warmth of his hand and the strength of his words squared the little girl's shoulders and lit her face with a brilliant smile. The sight of it was infectious; the onlookers, straining to catch a glimpse of their new monarchs, responded in kind, smiles sweeping through the crowd. The sight of such welcoming faces was all it took to bolster Lucy's courage back to its usual heights, and she stepped proudly down into the crowd with her brother at her side.

"King Peter!" a stout, eager man with a heavy gold chain around his shoulders came forward from the better-dressed, more central part of the crowd. A plump, much-dimpled woman hurried along behind him, beaming as well, and as the man swept a very deep bow, she dipped a wobbling curtsey that had Lucy clapping both hands over her mouth to stifle an unQueenly giggle.

"Your Grace," Peter smiled, inclining his head in acknowledgment. "Lionel, Duke of the Lone Islands. And . . . your lady wife?"

"Gertilda," the Duke declared proudly, indicating the dimpled woman, "Duchess of the Lone Islands."

When she had still been on board the ship with Peter, Lucy had asked him to explain the ruling system of the Lone Islands to her again, as she found it terribly confusing. Peter's only response had been to confess that so did he; they in turn had sought the counsel of a Minister, who explained a large part of the confusion was due to the erratic way the titles of the rulers kept slipping and sliding about.

"It's quite plainly under your command, of course, your Majesty; for centuries now, the King of Narnia has been Emporer here by rights for a long time, but the trick of the thing is how far away the Islands are from Narnia, you see? They must have somebody to command them more locally, and that's where the confusion comes in, because they can't seem to settle on who it should be. One century it'll be a Duke, the next century a new Duke will do something the folks don't like, they'll incite a rebellion and appoint a Governor . . . most unstable system of Government. But the current family is well liked; they keep to themselves, which usually seems to do the trick. They've been in charge for more than a century and are very popular people, as these things go. I don't expect your Majesties can look for any trouble when you're there."

So Lucy, smiling at the Duchess and offering her little hand to be kissed, as was the custom in the Lone Islands when greeting a new regent, felt confident enough in her grasp of Island politics to ask after the Duchess's family (this is of course a terrible faux pas if one's people are given to inciting riots and making off with members of the family, but quite acceptable, if one knows all is well).

Gertilda at once replied that, bless her little Majesty for asking, they were all keeping well, and looking forward to the chance to make the acquaintance of the new King and Queen. Lucy found she didn't know how to reply to something like that, so she simply smiled and said that was very nice of her Grace to say, and had they been waiting long? And somehow in between Gertilda's reassurances to the contrary, and Lucy's timid questions about the people who had assembled to welcome them, they found they didn't have to worry about tripping over their own questions, and by the time they had reached the fine carriage that would bear them all back to the castle, they had left off the "Majesty" and "Grace" parts of their speech altogether and were simply Queen Lucy and Gertilda to one another (for a Queen is allowed greater informality in addressing others than others are in addressing her; but neither of them seemed to mind, and so that was all right).

Meantime, Peter fell into his own discussion with Duke Lionel concerning the system of tax collection that had been set up on the islands. It wasn't a tax such as we have in our world, with paying a percentage on everything we buy and find and own; just a sort of honorarium payment of goods in return for tenancy. But Peter was very nervous of doing even this much since he had never had to collect a tax of any kind before, and was terribly grateful of the chance to hear a more experienced perspective than his own. He and Lucy both nodded and waved to the onlookers, the way onlookers expect their Kings and Queens to do, but were otherwise entirely caught up in the discussions that they held, so that it hardly seemed a journey of a half dozen yards to the carriage when in fact they had covered a distance of several hundred.

"How funny," Lucy laughed, once they were all seated within the open box, and the horses leaped forward, hooves clattering on the cobbles, "we've been at sea for so long —over two weeks, now, hasn't it been, Peter?— it seems so strange to move in a way that's not bobbing up and down in the water."

"You had a pleasant voyage, then?" the Duke smiled at the young Queen, and Lucy said yes, they really had.

"I was a little nervous of it at first," she informed him with charming candour, "because Peter and I have never sailed on the ocean before, and it really is so very _large_. But it's so beautiful, too, and I love looking at it from my window at home, and sometimes, when we have the chance, we like to walk on the shore by the castle, and I love it then, too, so I thought surely sailing on it would only make me love it more."

Peter, watching Lucy explain her thought processes to the delighted Duke, had to hide a smile. There was such earnestness in her face, such complete lack of guile . . . he found himself wishing that she might stay that way always. Lucy, he thought, would just not be Lucy if she did not always have a bit of her breathless, little-girlishness about her.

He lost hold of the thought as they continued along in the carriage toward the home of the Duke and Duchess and their family, but it returned to him in a powerful rush as he watched his sister make the acquaintance of the couple's seven dimpled, red-cheeked children, ranging in age from a hearty, laughing girl not much younger than Peter himself down to a perfectly round, apple-cheeked baby who chortled in deep delight when Lucy gave him fifteen kisses on each of his adorable cheeks.

"Bless you, Queen Lucy," Gertilda laughed, "you've captured his heart! Our poor Winky, he's besotted. You'll never be rid of him now!"

"Oh, I don't want to be rid of him," Lucy laughed, "I love babies, especially the happy ones. Look at him, he wants my finger!" And indeed, the infant whose mother referred to him as Winky had caught Lucy's forefinger in one deliciously dimpled fist, and had begun to gum on the Queen's fingertip with great enthusiasm. "You can't have it, Winky, I'm so sorry; I need it. But I'll find something else for you, presently." With great care she recaptured possession of her finger and moved on to greet the rest of the children, all of whom dipped bows or curtseys that grew markedly more practiced the older the bower or curtseyer happened to be.

Once these introductions had been effected, the children were sent back to the nursery and the schoolroom, according to age, and it was proposed that Peter and Lucy would like to retire to their rooms to refresh themselves before a meal could be made. This proposal met with hearty Royal approval, and brother and sister at once found themselves swept away to chambers that overlooked the channel, allowing them to see all the way across the water to Doorn. Felimath was invisible behind it, but somehow there was no forgetting it was there; the Lone Islands were so perfectly, marvellously a set of three that one couldn't think of any of them without at once thinking of the others as well.

Peter and Lucy had separate sleeping chambers, but they had been given a private sitting room for the duration of their stay, and once she had splashed a good deal of water on her face and gotten some of the dust of town washed off, Lucy found her way back to the room and curled up in the casement window to wait. She was there over half an hour before she began to fidget a little, and wonder what was keeping Peter.

"I don't know why people make such a fuss about girls taking so much time to get ready," she reflected, wrapping her arms around her legs and resting her little chin on her knees. "Even Susan would have been done by now. Where can he—" and then she sat up, because the door had opened and Peter was there.

"Have you been here long?" he asked, shutting the door behind him to give them some measure of privacy. Lucy, not wanting to sound sulky, said she wasn't sure, but something in her face must have told Peter it had been long enough, because he looked sincerely apologetic.

"I was waylaid by a couple fellows in the corridor. They wanted to talk taxes with me and I was in something of a panic— I don't know much of anything about taxes. I didn't want to brush them off, but I didn't think it would be fair of me to say anything for sure about Narnian taxes when I don't even know about Narnian taxes myself. It took me an age to get rid of them without causing any offence."

"It's all right," Lucy reassured him, sliding her feet off the deep window sill and letting her legs hang over the edge. "I expect that's what it will be like for the next few months, won't it? They'll want to talk to us about all sorts of things."

"You're probably right," Peter agreed. "I'm sorry, Lucy; it looks as if we won't have very much time to talk about things that are just us."

"Oh . . ." Lucy frowned a little. "But . . . really, Peter, I think these things _are_ us. I mean, if we're Kings and Queens, all four of us . . . taxes and land disputes and figures —ugh, we'll probably have to do sums, won't we? Let's hire somebody to do sums for us, Peter, I don't like to think that I could be in charge of something like that— and families that stretch back for generations . . . it's all going to be a part of us, and we'll have to know all of it, because . . . it's ours, now."

"And you don't mind?" Peter looked at his littlest sister in real concern. She looked so small, perched on the windowsill like that. The very land of which she was Queen spread out behind her, the hills of Avra dotted with estates and farms and villages, each little building representing several people who would look to her —to his little sister, so tiny her slippered feet swung well above the flagstone floor of the castle— for guidance. It frightened him to realise it. Yet Lucy tipped her head to the side and reflected on the question with all the gravity of a woman thrice her age.

"No," she said at last, "do you know, Peter, I really don't. In fact," a sudden smile lit her face, and she jumped down from the sill to face him directly, "I think we will be rather good at it."

And with such shining confidence staring him right in the face, Peter found there was nothing for it but to take his sister's hand in his and escort her downstairs to see what feast had been prepared for them.

O0O0O0O

When Edmund awoke the morning following their arrival in Archenland, he was relieved to find he felt entirely himself again. His head had still been spinning when Susan sent him off to bed, so he had been secretly concerned he might not be fit for anything the next day. Yet when the sun struck his face, waking him, and he gingerly slid from his bed, he found his legs were steady and his head was clear. Much cheered, he let the attendant who had been assigned to him see to all the washing and dressing parts of the morning and even managed to strike up something of a conversation with the fellow, who was called Bert. It was an easy name to remember, as names in that world went, and Edmund found himself kindly disposed to the fellow on account of it. Bert was very polite and not much given to conversation, but he responded to the King's questions, and saw Edmund on his way a satisfied and well-dressed King.

Edmund met up with Susan at the breakfast table, and found King Lune was already abroad as well. Queen Lora was not present, and King Lune explained that his wife liked to take her breakfast in the nursery, with their son.

"She gets very little time to see him the rest of the day, you see," he explained fondly. "Duties, and such . . . and Corin's a poor help when it comes to running a kingdom!"

"How is Corin?" Susan asked. "Lucy and I found we missed him dearly, after you left; we were sorry that you were called away so suddenly."

"As were we." A cloud passed over King Lune's kindly, jolly face at this mention of his hasty departure from Narnia, but he addressed the question with prompt courtesy. "Our son bides well, Queen Susan, and my thanks to you for your interest. He greatly enjoyed your gracious hospitality, and his lady mother is eager to make your acquaintance. Now . . . King Edmund," directing his attention to the boy who was piling his plate with bacon and eggs and kippers and toast and every other breakfast delicacy you can imagine, "I hope you would not think it frivolous to propose a hunting party for this afternoon. It does not rest easy in my mind that an attack could be made on Queen Susan within a league of my gates; I propose that we assemble between us such men and animals as are fit for the task, and make a thorough sweep of the area. You keep a pack of scent hounds, I believe?"

"Well," said Edmund cautiously, still getting a feel for how one was meant to refer to talking animals, "we travelled with one such pack . . . Talking Dogs, you know, but . . ."

"Yes, of course," King Lune smiled very kindly, and Edmund felt that the King really did understand the difficulty of it. "I see; loyal Narnians all, I am sure! And I keep sight hounds, so between us both we are well kitted for such a chase; it is in my mind that we should arm ourselves and be certain none of these creatures dare venture within five leagues of the Pass, for it would be to the benefit of neither Archenland nor Narnia should that road become dangerous to travel."

"Yes, I see," Edmund said, paling at the thought; it would certainly mean the end of all easy commerce between the two kingdoms, and that, he knew, must be avoided at all costs. "I bow to your Majesty's superior knowledge of such things; I'm afraid I've never been on a hunt, so I don't know how such things are to be accomplished, but if you can inform me on all matters that will want my attention, I promise you shall have the aid of every fit man and beast in my party."

"Fine man," Lune nodded jovially. "And how, then— never been on a hunt? A fine thing, indeed! Were it a nobler quarry we sought we might make a fine sport of it, but even so, I wager shalt find some satisfaction in the chase."

"Yes," said Edmund, thinking of the Leopard's snarls, the scream of the frightened mare and the look of deadly, ashen calm on the face of his sister, "yes, I am sure I shall." And he swallowed a bite of toast with a quiet deliberation that had Susan lifting her eyes from her eggs to study him with gentle suspicion.

The young Queen said nothing, however, until breakfast was done, and several Ministers had cornered both their monarchs for a heated discussion of who had charge of the various documents they had brought with them. Susan and Edmund heard them out with fraying patience, divided the responsibility between both men, and then escaped to a small alcove off the main corridor, as Susan insisted that they needed to talk.

"I am quite in favour of making the Pass safe for travellers," she said, frowning at her brother, "and I am sure you will acquit yourself commendably at whatever exercise you choose to undertake, but I trust that you will remember, Edmund, you have no experience on a hunt. And as for wanting to simply take satisfaction from a kill due to whatever fear and anger you may have felt as a result of the attack last night . . . I will tell you frankly, I don't like to think it of you. It smacks of revenge, and is ill becoming a King of any country, much less one of which I am proud to be Queen."

Edmund was on the verge of making an extremely heated reply, but something held him back. He couldn't be sure what it was; perhaps it was the way she looked at him, with such open concern, or perhaps it was the fact that she did not lecture him, as she would have done in the past, but spoke in a fashion that was both simple and direct. She was telling him what she held in her heart, and he felt that to scorn her for it would be unforgivable. So he swallowed his temper, and told her he understood.

"Thank you," Susan breathed, and even in the shadows Edmund could sense her relief. "That's all I needed to hear." She clasped his hand between hers, and smiled. "Happy hunting, then, brother, and, as you love me, a safe return as well." Then she slipped from the alcove and was gone, leaving Edmund to think that perhaps a big sister was a handy thing to have along on a diplomatic journey, if she could keep a fellow from doing something she knew he would later regret.

O0O0O0O

After taking her leave of her brother, Susan stopped a passing person in the corridor to ask direction to the Prince's rooms. Following the instructions with care, she found herself standing outside of a nursery door with two solemn guards flanking the portal, both of whom politely but steadfastly refused to let her pass.

"Tom? Tomlin?" A light, friendly voice came from the interior of the nursery. "Is aught amiss?"

"A visitor, your Majesty," the guard on the left replied. "Her Majesty, Susan of Narnia."

"Oh, but how lovely! Let her in at once, please," the voice instructed, and so Susan was told she might enter, and did.

The nursery, she found, was a surprisingly light and airy room for all that it was in a Northern castle, which is by necessity a rather dark place. Bright tapestries hung from the walls, and panels were painted with merry scenes depicting hunts and parties and all manner of amusing events. The furniture was as soft and comfortable as could be, and in the middle of this pleasant place sat a lovely young woman with a child at her knee. The child Susan knew; Prince Corin was chattering at the woman in front of him, but the lady, with a gentle word, put her son aside and rose to greet the girl before her.

"Your Majesty," Susan remembered to say, and curtseyed. Queen Lora smiled.

"Your Majesty," she replied, and curtseyed in return. When she straightened, her eyes danced in gentle humour. "I will gladly be as solemn and as formal about this as you wish, my dear; it is my wish as your hostess that you should be at your ease, and if this is what gives you greatest comfort, we will sit in my parlour and exchange empty courtesies for as long as you like. But would you not prefer something more relaxed? Corin has told me what a comfort you were to him when he journeyed with his father to Narnia; I should like nothing more than to know the Queen who sang my son lullabies to help him sleep, for it is she I love, for his sake."

Susan might have been badly startled by this open offer of friendship had Corin's intervention not come at that moment; the Prince, beaming up at the newly arrived Queen, rushed over to hold up a battered toy horse for her perusal.

"Here is a knight's horse for you, Queen Susan!" he declared, and Susan, saved the difficulty of making a direct reply to the smiling, friendly woman who, though she was more than a decade Susan's senior, was her equal in rank, bent to accept the humble treasure with all due solemnity.

"Thank you, Corin," she said. "He is truly the handsomest horse I have ever seen; every queen loves a gallant knight to serve as her champion. Now, if any offer, I shall have a horse for him to ride."

"Well," said Corin apologetically, studying the horse Susan held in her hand, "I think he would have to be a very _small_ knight."

Susan laughed at that; really threw her head back, and laughed. And, before she could help herself, she caught the little boy around the waist and gave him a quick, fierce hug. "A very small knight it shall be," she decided, then straightened to look at Queen Lora, still smiling. "I am sure your parlour is very lovely, Madam," she said, "but in truth . . . I find I much prefer the nursery."

"Then the nursery it is," the Archenlandish Queen declared, and together she and the girl-queen from Narnia followed Prince Corin back to the centre of his own little domain, and sat down to play.

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** My congratulations to all who caught the Lewis Carroll reference in the previous chapter. Also, my apologies to Katie, who was hoping for aggressively persuasive diplomacy in this one; maybe sometime in chapters to come! First I'll need an aggressively persuasive diplomat; then we'll see what fun will follow.

Up next: Through Bush, Through Briar, wherein a Narnian King has his first hunt and greets his first new subject.


	6. Through Bush, Through Briar

Through Bush, Through Briar

O0O0O0O

Lunch with King Lune's court was a noisy, friendly event. Edmund was surprised to find that he enjoyed it, as he didn't usually enjoy noisy things. He was careful not to eat too much since he had to ride soon after, but it was a tricky proposition; the food was so delicious, and there was simply so much of it, that it was difficult to hold back. In Narnia they had enough to eat, but only just; the problem with a long winter is that it makes growing crops a terribly tricky proposition. Over the course of the winter some fresh food stores had been smuggled in from the Narnian protectorates, and of course there was a certain amount of fish and meat to go around, but it was only really with the thaw that the pinch of hunger had been slowly released. With the sight of so much food spread out before them, in quantities such as they had not seen in some time . . . well, it was little wonder that the Narnian envoy was eager to tuck in.

Susan, Edmund saw, sat with Prince Corin and a lovely, smiling woman he supposed was Queen Lora; the lady wore no crown on her head, but she sat at King Lune's side and every now and then would lean over and murmur something to his Majesty that would check the speed at which the King enjoyed his meal. If Edmund had to guess, he would have said she was warning King Lune against the same thing that kept the young Narnian King from making too free with his meals: for you see, riding on an exceptionally full stomach is never a wise idea.

As the King ate and the Queen did likewise, the little Prince clutched a fistful of bread in one hand as he gestured wildly with the other, speaking to Susan who sat beside him. Susan, in turn, drank her soup with care and responded to the witticisms of her tiny host with such grave courtesy that by the end of the meal Corin had developed a terribly grand opinion of his own conversation, and had to be put to bed for several hours to recover from this burst of overconfidence.

After she had seen her son to bed, Queen Lora invited Queen Susan to join her in the stable yard, and observe the preparations for the hunt. Susan, who had never been on a hunt or seen one readied, thought this sounded promisingly instructive and followed her hostess to the yard. There they found a variety of men and beasts readying for departure. Everybody was talking and laughing the way they always do when they're getting ready for something simply wonderful, and the mood was contagious. Susan found herself smiling as she followed Lora into the yard and looked at all the sights around her.

A group of men from the Archenland court stood with their mounts, chatting amiably with Pollus the Centaur about his views on shoes. Now, of course they were not discussing shoes such as humans wear, since Pollus had no experience with those, but rather horse shoes. You may be interested to know that the wearing of horse shoes is a topic of great contention amongst Centaurs, some of whom think they look very smart when worn, while others believe they are a pointless vanity and would not wear them for the world. Pollus, being somewhat moderate in his views, did not wear horse shoes himself but did not scorn those who did. The Archenlandish men thought this a worthy and just compromise, and told him as much.

Not far from Pollus were two young Archen men, really boys not many years older than Edmund himself, who busied themselves with the huntsmen, the whippers-in and the two highly vocal dog packs. Susan caught the eye of one of the young men and smiled kindly, then felt terribly about it when the poor boy flushed to the roots of his hair and quickly ducked his head. Because of his embarrassment he missed a question put to him by one of the Narnian hounds, a lovely, silky-eared creature called Pansy, and had to stammer that he begged her pardon, he hadn't heard her. Pansy, with the patience of one who has raised many puppies to maturity, repeated her remark, and listened to the boy's reply with great consideration, causing Susan to smile again and look around once more.

Not all of the Talking Dogs remained with the hound pack, she saw; two had found their way over to chat with a pair of great Cats, and although Susan could not hear what was being said she judged from the postures of all involved that this was some sort of polite, diplomatic discussion, most likely about their respective roles in the pending chase. She didn't know much about the workings of such things, but she supposed it would make perfect sense that the Cats would sometimes get in the way of the dogs; it's simply according to the natures of all involved. Naturally great Cats aren't taken along for normal, sporting hunts, but as this was a question of defence, they were considered vital to the task, and Susan thought it very nice that everybody was making such an effort to understand one another.

There was, however, one person who looked as if he wasn't getting much done in the way of understanding. King Edmund stood by his horse, and Susan, looking over to him in hopes that she might catch his eye, saw that King Lune was engaging the young visiting King in a lengthy explanation of the route they would take, his reasons for taking it, the nuances and variations to be found along the path . . . Susan had to fight to stifle laughter. Poor Edmund was completely out of his depth, and looked it.

"My dear," Queen Lora tilted her head as she regarded her husband with an unmistakeable degree of affection, "you are ever thorough. Yet I perceive your guest is confused . . . perhaps he would best benefit from your experience as you follow the path itself."

"Eh?" King Lune squinted first at his wife, and then at poor Edmund, who was undeniably flummoxed. "Oh, yes, yes, capital . . . capital idea. Shall we off, then, Sir?"

Edmund found his tongue long enough to say that as it pleased his host to depart, so did it please him. He hadn't meant it to come out so formally, but once it had, he thought he rather liked the sound of it; certainly King Lune seemed to appreciate the dignity of the words, for he made a very deep and honourable bow to his guest before turning to fit his foot to the stirrup and mount his leggy grey mare.

This left Edmund to catch sight of a brief smile that graced his sister's lips and a twinkle in the eyes of Queen Lora that prompted an answering smile and twinkle from him. Then he fit his own foot to his stirrup and swung up on Irra's back, reining his mount around and taking a moment to get him under control before the sharp too-roo, too-roo of the huntsman's horn sounded through the air. The dogs leaped forward in eager anticipation of the chase to come, and this was the cue for Edmund, along with the rest of the hunting party, to gallop through the gates and over the field toward the pass, following in the wake of King Lune, who merrily led the way.

O0O0O0O

I don't know if you have ever been on any sort of a proper, organised hunt before, but if you haven't, it doesn't really matter, since the sort of hunt that took place that day was not the usual sort. Proper hunting is of course always done with a laudable goal in mind, most often the acquisition of food to lay up in store for the winter ahead. Less often must a hunt be so thoroughly organised when the participants simply mean to eradicate a pest; if it is, it is usually done for show and the benefit of the vanity of those involved, rather than the good of all. But very occasionally there is a pest of such proportions that taking ordinary precautions will not suffice, and this was the reason that spurred on the hunters that day.

I do wish you could have seen it for yourself, for they were a sight to behold. They did not look grand in the way that people will when they have purposely set out to make themselves important, nor were they fearsome in the manner of an army mounted and armed for war. But there was a grandeur in their faces as they conferred with each other about the purpose that drew them out that day, and there was something fearsome indeed in their clear purpose. The dogs loped in front of the horses, glorying in the exercise as the Cats wound their way through the trees alongside the hunting party, and the mounted men and coursing Beasts moved swiftly through the trees. Until you have seen such a thing it is difficult to explain how magnificent it really is, but the best I can do is to say they all had a sort of unintended grandeur that was somehow made all the better for their very unconsciousness of it.

"Sir," Edmund guided Irra alongside King Lune's mare, being careful not to crowd her, "when we were getting ready, you said something about flanking the path. I was wondering . . ."

"Yes, yes, quite," King Lune bobbed his head agreeably, and his mare, as if sensing her rider's good humour, tossed her own head in kind. "What I had meant to propose was a plan for tracing these creatures back to their lair. For it is in my mind that if they have made any sort of habit of attacking riders on the Pass, they must have a regular route they use to gain access to their spot of ambush."

"Yes, of course," said Edmund, and struggled to follow his sister's counsel, rather than remember the way her horse had screamed.

King Lune, unmindful of the conflict that gripped his young guest, continued in explaining his reasoning. "I do not believe it will be possible for us to come across this route if we stick to this path alone, but if we send some of our good friends," with a courteous nod to the dogs and the Cats, as well as various other creatures of similar size and fluidity of movement, "to flank us as we ride, they are certain to alert us to any trail they detect."

"A good plan," Edmund decided, when he realised that King Lune was awaiting his opinion, "I mean, I think it is . . . as far as I'm fit to judge such things . . . I'm awfully sorry, Sir, I don't really know much about any of this."

King Lune seemed to take great delight in Edmund's honesty; at least, he beamed at the boy with such kindly affection that Edmund felt a sudden rush of gratitude and relief and wasn't even sure why.

"No shame in that, Sir," he assured the young monarch. "Truly, your Majesty, there is no shame to be had in ignorance unless you take no steps to remedy it. Nothing worse than arrogance and ignorance combined, eh? But here, now," he nodded the huntsman who rode up alongside them on his sturdy black pony, "here is a good and worthy man who can explain the thing even better than I. My lord huntsman! Wilt come and give counsel to our guest, Narnia's king? 'Tis his first hunt."

"Indeed, Sire?" the huntsman smiled at his own monarch with a sort of fondness and respect so simple and evident that it struck Edmund quite forcefully. "Then it is my pleasure to be of service. Your Majesty," with a courteous nod to Edmund as he manoeuvred his agreeable pony alongside Irra, "what know you of these matters?"

"Well," said Edmund apologetically, "almost nothing. I know you get on the horses and follow the hounds through the woods and fields and such, and when they find something they run it down, and then usually the hunters shoot it. But I don't know anything more than that."

I don't know if you realise the import of what Edmund said. I especially don't know if you realise what a true rarity it is to find a humble king. I don't mean falsely modest kings, of course, or even kings who are so unsure of themselves that they let other people make all the decisions and don't once try to figure things out for themselves. I mean kings who have the authority and strength of will to effect change, but don't go around saying "you must do this because I say so" or flying into a temper when people point out valid flaws in their reasoning. I mean kings who see where they need to change and make no bones about it, but simply set about trying to change because they know it's for the betterment of everybody.

Edmund, at that point in his life, was not yet such a king. Not exactly. But he was a boy who was at an age where he should have been at his cheekiest, his most arrogant, his most self important and his most insufferable. He should have been a perfect pill to all around him, and of course, not very long ago, he had been. But he sat on his horse and looked at the huntsman and made no bones about how very little he knew, and in so doing, he let the huntsman know that he would one day be just such a king.

That sort of king is probably the scarcest species to be found on any planet. Yet not only are they the rarest thing, they are also one of the most valuable, and men and women of wisdom, people who know anything about anything to do with the running of a country, react in the most impassioned ways when they meet that rare treasure, a humble king.

King Lune's huntsman was one such man.

When Edmund looked at the huntsman and said, with perfect honesty, that he didn't know anything more than what he had said, and when he didn't apologise for it but simply looked at the huntsman with the expectation of being told what he did not know . . . well, the huntsman got very choked up indeed. He had to swallow three times before he could even clear his throat, and when he spoke, his voice was very scratchy.

"Then, your Majesty, it is my honour to stand as your teacher."

And as the party continued along the path to the Pass, and King Lune issued various directions for all to follow, the huntsman rode at Edmund's side and held the King's ear with his counsel, the wisdom of which would stay with the boy for all the days of his life. It was not the words he spoke that made such an impression, but rather the way in which he said them.

Edmund, even new as he was at this business of being a ruler, recognised that the attitude of the huntsman toward him was something special. It was not really celebratory, or overawed, or even particularly servile, but it was reverent; it was in fact reverence at its purest form, and in the wisdom of the huntsman's discernment, and the simple authority of his explanations, Edmund took his first lesson as a true King of Narnia, not from another monarch, or a Minister, or even a trusted friend, but rather an ordinary man who knew something he did not.

For such is the nature of humble kings.

O0O0O0O

I don't know if many of the hunters that day had expected the whole affair to be endless excitement and one prolonged chase from start to finish; I am sure some of them did, for there are some of That Sort in every group, no matter how worthy they might be. But whether they were in the majority or not was difficult to say, because what with everybody so intent on the task of actually tracking the creatures down, nobody really had time to look over at his neighbour and see what the other fellow thought.

I do know that no trail was found. The group located the place where the Leopard had died, and the werewolf with it, and from that point they fanned out in all directions, searching for anything that might be used as a trail for the creatures to access the path from their lair. But none could be found; the scent hounds turned up nothing more than a few traces of werewolf in the air, and the sight hounds wandered in confused circles until one of them spotted a rabbit and bolted after it, leading the majority of the other sight hounds in its wake. Even two of the Talking Hounds, all keyed up with the expectation of a chase, dashed off in pursuit as well, and were extremely shamefaced when the lot of them were brought back by three very breathless whippers-in.

The hunters travelled in ever-widening circles outward from the point of the skirmish, but it was not until several hours had passed and the sun was in a distinctly western position in the sky that it happened. Edmund was having a quiet word with King Lune about something he and Peter had not had the chance to clear up when the king was visiting them, two mounted noblemen were making a half-hearted circle of a copse of trees, and three Talking Hounds were making an equally half-hearted examination of a shallow gully when a sudden snarl, a hoarse voice shouting threats and a volley of barking went up some few hundred metres away.

"Wolf! Wolf! Wolf-wolf-wolf-wolf-wolf!"

It was anybody's guess whether this meant there was one wolf or seven, but nobody stopped to ask. Clearly there had been no expression of friendship from one or all of them. The party thundered in the wake of the hounds, pursuing the fleeing grey shape through the woods, into ever-thickening undergrowth that slowed the horses and made the Cats vicious and impatient as they fought to find a way over it all.

"Catch it alive if you can!" Edmund panted, hoping his command was loud enough to carry ahead to the dogs. "Need to ask it — where — lair — is." Then he had to leave off talking in favour of clinging to Irra's back for dear life, because the animal, first and foremost bred and trained to be a battle charger, was not an ideal choice for use as a hunter. He had a very jarring landing after a jump.

When they at last overtook the wolf, however, he was in no condition to put up even a token resistance. He was stretched out on the forest floor, and a man was just straightening from the act of reclaiming his knife. He studied the hunting party but made no offensive gesture, even as the agitated hound pack reached him and swarmed all about where he stood, nosing the dead wolf in great consternation, chattering to one another as they did.

"Dead!"

"Dead?!"

"Dead!"

"But the King said—"

"Surely you heard—"

"How can he be dead if the King said—"

"Somebody wasn't listening, that's for sure and certain, King says a thing and—"

"Shameful, it is, if the King says—"

"A disgrace, that sort of disobedience, disregard for the leading of a—"

"Never put up with it for a moment in one of MY pups, you can be—"

"Blatant disregard for the—"

"King said, surely—"

"Dead!"

"Dead?!"

"Dead!"

"Well!"

"I never!"

Such, I am afraid, is the conversation of hounds when they get together. It's not a bad sort of conversation, really, only a little of that goes a very long way, and really, it gets extremely trying after a very short time. That's why the whippers-in set aside their whips and, with great courtesy, suggested the hounds might enjoy awaiting the pleasure of the King's opinion on the matter. The hounds subsided with something of an effort, since even hounds have in them the dog's turning to the one in charge, but still among them there ran that current of excitement, a sustained, collective quiver of indignation, for dogs do not appreciate the disruption of order.

With the hounds silenced, it was possible for Edmund to turn his attention to the quiet man with the knife. He stood taller than the average man, and his chest and shoulders were in good proportion to his height. His jerkin and breeches were dark and well worn, and the shirt he wore beneath his jerkin looked as if it might once have been green, before time, sun and nature had taken their toll on it. He wore an unstrung bow and well-stocked quiver on his back, and held the bloodied knife with an easy confidence that would have commanded the attention of anybody with even an ounce of self-preservation.

The men in the hunting party were just such persons.

Edmund would have been perfectly content to watch others contend with the issue at hand, but when he realised everybody seemed to be looking to him, King Lune included, it came to him with a jolt that the wood in which they stood was Narnian, and that the right was his to greet the newcomer— or challenge him.

Edmund swallowed very hard.

"Stranger," he called, "I see you have done us a great service in slaying the servant of she who was our enemy. You have my thanks."

The man inclined his head and lowered his blade just a fraction to study the boy king astride the horse. Edmund, trying not to feel too self conscious, shifted in his saddle, and behind him Pollus spoke up.

"Might we know the name of the man who has done a service to our king?" he demanded, and the quiet rumble of his voice both calmed and strengthened Edmund.

"I am called Fergal," the man said, and although he did not lower the knife, his grip and stance did seem to relax. "I come at invitation of the High King, Peter of Narnia, and the three who rule at his side." With these words his free hand descended into his jerkin to pull out a much-folded piece of parchment. Fergal passed this to the nearest hunter, who passed it to the next, and he to the next, and so on, until the folded sheet reached Edmund, who opened it and saw it was indeed a letter drafted by Peter, addressed to a family by the name of Armour.

"Your name is Armour?" he wanted to know, and Fergal made a slight negative motion with his head.

"Armour was the name of my mother," he corrected. "She was the only child of Rogan Armour and his wife. My father was the man who loved and wed her."

"And you're the only one left?" Edmund asked cautiously. Fergal's expression was inscrutable as he waited a moment before making his reply.

"To whom am I addressing my remarks?"

"The man to whom you speak," Pollus stepped up to stand beside his sovereign, "is Edmund, King of Narnia."

"Then it is good," Fergal decided, and addressed Edmund again. "I am father, husband, and brother to none, your Majesty. Mine was not a noble family, but they were honourable, and they served well. I would do the same, if you would have me."

Edmund looked first at the solemn, undeniably capable man, and then down at the body of the wolf.

"Then it is good," he decided, and, to the vague surprise of all around them, both he and Fergal smiled.

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** Well, I missed a Friday! That was my Internet's fault, however, and I spent much time scowling fiercely at it. My scowl is not really a scary sight, but perhaps I gave the Internet such a good laugh it decided to humour me, because it's back! And next week the next chapter should be posted at the proper time. I hope!

Up next: Tea, Toes and Togetherness, wherein Queens confer, kingdoms are explained and a Prince makes his presence known.


	7. Tea, Toes and Togetherness

Tea, Toes and Togetherness

O0O0O0O

When Prince Corin was informed that he was now fit for company, he took the news with good cheer and did not seem vexed at his mother for putting him to bed in the first place. He accompanied the two Queens down to the garden, where Queen Lora had suggested that they might talk. Susan wasn't sure how her hostess expected to get a word in edgewise, with Corin busily narrating the many adventures of a heroic knight named Sir Longboots and his faithful horse Brownie, but she trusted that Queen Lora had a better understanding of how to deal with the Prince than she.

As it turned out, when they reached the garden there was a tea set out for them so Corin joined them at the table and fed his toy horse a biscuit as he continued relating the exploits of Sir Longboots. Evidently the gentleman enjoyed an active lifestyle.

"And after he rescued the boys and girls from the Minotaur," Corin explained, "he had to ride to the place where the sun sets."

"You mean west?" Susan asked, thoroughly entertained by the narration. Corin shook his head impatiently.

"No, I mean the place where the sun goes into the ground at night!"

"The sun doesn't go into the ground, darling," Queen Lora smiled, "it goes into the sea."

"But," said Corin, much perplexed by this twist in the tale, "then how can Sir Longboots ride to the sea? Brownie would sink." This logistical difficulty kept the little boy occupied long enough for the two Queens to concentrate on their food. As they ate, Susan ventured a question.

"Is that true?" she asked shyly. "That is, about the— the sun. Does it truly sink into the sea in this world?"

"Why, yes," Queen Lora looked surprised. "At least, that is what all the stories say . . . and men have come back who swear it is so. Why? Are there worlds where it does not?" And she did not look sceptical or scornful, or even amused, but simply curious. Susan was staggered.

"Well— yes," the young Queen said, and tried to remember how she came to be so certain of this. "That is, I believe there are . . . I am sure I have heard of them."

"Mercy," Queen Lora sat forward, intrigued at the notion. "But then where does it go, when it is night? Or is there no night time, only day?"

"No, there is night," Susan asserted, with some return of confidence. "The worlds spin through the air around the sun, and when you are on the worlds, it seems as though the sun is sinking into the water or the earth, but really the world is just turning so another part of it can see the sun. Then when the world turns around again, you have the morning." It was not, perhaps, the most scientific explanation of the thing, but Susan felt she had gotten her point across, and her hostess appeared to agree.

"Why, how clever!" Queen Lora seemed enchanted with this notion. "Spinning worlds! It's like a child's plaything, isn't it? But wouldn't the people on the worlds get terribly dizzy, after a time?"

"I don't know," said Susan, who was listening to her own explanation and beginning to wonder the same thing. "I expect they get used to it, somehow."

"They must," the Archenlandish Queen agreed, offering Susan a dish of small cakes and then taking one for herself. "What a delightful idea . . . do you know, Corin had something very like that over his cradle when he was newly born, a little clockwork toy that spun all sorts of baubles around a centre figure. They didn't move in proper circles, they intersected one another and . . . well, it was terribly clever. I could never make out how the thing was accomplished, but it was his favourite toy. They used to laugh at it constantly, both he and—" The Queen broke off abruptly, and much of the merriment left her face.

Susan, anticipating the close of the story, looked up in polite askance, only to see her hostess turn worried eyes on the third member of their party. Corin, not minding the sudden silence, was still wholly preoccupied with the toy horse he held. He was explaining to it in grave tones the dangers it would encounter if Sir Longboots decided to make the perilous trek across the water, and seemed unaware of his mother's anxious gaze, unlike Susan, who grew vaguely alarmed when Queen Lora still did not speak.

"Your Majesty?" she ventured. "Queen Lora, are you quite well?"

"I— yes," Queen Lora shook herself and looked back to Susan with an apologetic smile. "Your pardon, my dear; my mind wandered. But please!" with a sunnier smile, "I feel very old, every time I hear you say "your Majesty" or even "Queen Lora." Can I not persuade you to simply call me Lora?"

One look at Susan's face should have told the older Queen that no, she could not, and once Lora did look closely at Susan, she saw it was the case. Her smile softened, and she patted the girl's hand.

"Very well. But we are neighbours, are we not? We live beside one another, after all, and although the Long Winter did put rather a strain on things, Archenland and Narnia have traditionally been the closest of friends. It only stands to reason that their rulers should then be friends as well, does it not?"

"I— I suppose so," Susan said, and wondered if she would ever feel completely at ease making grown up conversation with an actual grown up. It was one thing to be a little girl playing at kings and queens with one's brothers and sister, but quite another to sit at a beautifully laid table across from an honest to goodness Queen, and act like a grown up lady. It was rather daunting, really, particularly for Susan, who was always so anxious that she should do everything just right.

"Then shall we please be friends too?" Lora smiled. She was in fact not so very many years older than her guest; she had been just five years older than Susan when she had become Queen, and not six years had passed since then, so she was still quite young enough to remember how overwhelming everything could be to a young lady who suddenly found she had a kingdom to turn to her.

Perhaps Susan caught a flavour of the very real sympathy in the Queen's voice, or perhaps she was simply not the sort of girl who could turn down such a heartfelt plea for friendship; whatever the reason for it, she smiled back and, feeling a little awkward but quite eager all the same, said yes, of course they should be friends. "I would like it," she added, and Lora, plainly delighted, said very well, then, and turned just in time to whisk Brownie away from Corin's cup.

"We do not bathe our horses in our tea, Corin," she said, "horses do not enjoy tea." Corin accepted his mother's word as sound on this point, and returned to lecturing Brownie on the intricacies of sea travel, leaving Susan to venture another question.

"You said that Archenland and Narnia were— that is, are— I beg your pardon," flustered at her own inability to properly express what she meant, "that they have been good friends for . . . always?"

"Yes," Lora confirmed, checking the contents of the creamer and nodding at a hovering attendant that it required replenishment. "Truly, for always. You see, when Aslan made the world, the King and Queen he set to rule over Narnia were the only humans in the world. And the lovely thing about being the only King and Queen —indeed, the only humans— in the whole world is, when you have more than one son, you can give away quite a bit of land to each one without causing your world to be much parcelled off. King Frank gave his eldest son charge over Narnia, of course, but to his other sons he gave certain of those provinces that have become the protectorates and kingdoms we have now— Galma, Terebinthia, and so on."

"So the first King of Archenland," Susan said, trying to sort the thing out, "was a son of the King of Narnia?"

"No, actually," Lora accepted the replenished creamer from the attendant at her elbow. "Thank you— no, that will be all." Then, once the attendant had retreated, the Queen returned her attention to her guest. "At first King Frank only made his younger sons Dukes and Princes of the provinces he gave them. He thought it would be enough for them to have charge of their own land, but to still answer to the authority of their older brother. King Frank," with gentle humour, "clearly had no brothers of his own."

"Clearly," said Susan, and tried to envision Edmund's reaction if he had been told that he was only to be a duke or prince of a province, when Peter would have command not just of a kingdom, but of the whole world. Brothers didn't tend to work like that. "Did they . . . quarrel?"

"You mean," Lora guessed, "was there a war. No, there was no war; the young men themselves were reasonably content, but their descendants were not. One by one, grandsons, great-grandsons, great-great grandsons and so on, all petitioned their respective Kings for severance from the crown, for permission to set out in search of other lands to make their own, and that sort of thing. These petitions were always granted. They all remained on largely civil terms with each other for some years to come; it was only their later descendants who quarrelled with their distant cousins, and created rifts between them."

"How sad," Susan murmured, then frowned. "But then who was the first King of Archenland?"

Lora smiled. "The first King of Archenland was Col the First, a younger son of King Frank V. It was at the suggestion of his elder brother that Col took with him a company of his most trusted men and journeyed south to this place that is now Archenland. He found it pleasing to him, and asked his father and brother if they might not consent to see it made his own. Even then he did not ask to be made King of it; he only hoped it might be given him as a duchy, and that perhaps his son might inherit the land and be granted a higher title. You see, he trusted his brother to rule him well, and expected that he would have sufficient time in which to instruct his son in the running of a kingdom. Of course his brother would not hear of it, and insisted that Col be made king of this land he had found, but . . . he was a good, humble man, King Col, and wise; his is the example by which all Archenlandish Kings measure their conduct."

At the conclusion of this speech, Lora's expression had grown very soft, and reflective. She no longer looked directly at Susan, but rather at a point some distance over the girl's shoulder, and seemed to smile almost to herself. Susan had the terrible feeling common to those who have stepped into a room without knocking, and find they are interrupting a very private scene; certainly the look on Lora's face indicated she was no longer focused on Susan's presence, and Susan, seeking some tactful way to remind her, looked over and saw Corin was now attempting to have Brownie drink from the creamer.

"Oh, no!" the younger Queen admonished quickly, reaching out to slip a hand between the Prince's toy and the tableware. "No, I think milk is very bad for horses. They prefer water, and— and grass."

"Did you ever give your horse milk, Queen Susan?" Corin wondered, obligingly removing Brownie from the creamer as Lora gave a small start and returned to herself. Susan said no, indeed, she did not.

"Norry would hate milk," she maintained. "Norry likes grass, and water, and . . ." she tried to remember what else the groom had said he fed the horses. "Hay, and oats, I think, and . . . other things. What do you feed your horse, Corin? Your real horse, that is," she added. "Not Brownie."

"I haven't a horse," Corin frowned. "I just have a pony."

"Well, that's lovely," Susan said encouragingly, but Corin wasn't having any of it.

"I wanted a horse," he said, "like Papa has. I asked him for one, but he said not until I am big."

"You will be big soon enough," Lora put in, smiling at her son. Corin appeared unconvinced of this.

"But, Mama—"

"Goats butt," Lora interrupted firmly, "dogs bark, and little boys listen to their mamas. Why don't you take Brownie to quest along the wall?" she indicated the location with a nod. "I am sure Sir Longboots could rescue a— a blackbeetle, or something of the kind. I would like to speak with Queen Susan privately."

"Yes, Mama," Corin sighed, and took Brownie away to the wall to see if any imperilled blackbeetles required his services.

"He's wonderful," Susan said, as soon as Corin was out of earshot. Lora looked surprised, then laughed.

"Yes," she agreed, "he is. I've always thought so, but then, what else is a mother supposed to think? I suppose I'm simply not accustomed to hearing many people agree with me! He is," with admirable honesty, "so very _active_."

"Yes," said Susan, "but . . . well, it doesn't lessen his charm, does it? I think he's just wonderful."

"Thank you," Lora said, and there was such a wealth of feeling behind the words that it was Susan's turn to look surprised. Before she could think on it, however, Lora changed the subject, returning to their discussion about the division of the kingdoms, and asking if Susan had any more questions on that point.

"Knowing these things may help," she explained, "when you speak with those who want to return with you. If you understand the places where they have been living, you might understand why they think and do the things they are bound to."

Susan had to concede the wisdom of this, so she sat and listened as Lora related the tales of how each kingdom had fared since separating from the rulership of Narnia, as well as the general atmosphere of each protectorate. Galma, Lora said, had remained much like Narnia itself, and although the royal family was generally held to be somewhat foolish, they were good-hearted people and much liked by their warm, friendly, slightly foolish subjects.

"The Galmian king has been known to make lavish gestures well beyond the means of his coffers," she explained, "so stricter rules about accepting gifts between nations have long been in place; if you find any such laws in your books, they are for the protection of Galma's economic future."

Susan said she understood, and made a note to relay this information to her family as Lora went on with her explanation. Terebinthians, she said, were quite the opposite in that respect. There were known for a love of finery, and were ruthlessly careful when it came to economic matters.

"They do not give easily," Lora smiled, "but at heart they are not unkind, and are generous to those who are truly in need. They enjoy good relations with Archenland, although diplomatic forays must be planned with particular care, as the waters in the area have been plagued with pirates for some years."

"Pirates?" Susan paled at the thought, but Lora was quick to assure her that these were in no way a reflection of the ruling family, who were rigidly moral and enforced the law to the fullest extent when any such pirates were captured.

Also very severe in their dealings were the inhabitants of the Seven Isles, a group of lands to the north. The rulers were somewhat stand offish, but just, and the people who lived there were similarly reserved in nature but still fair-minded, and generally held to be trustworthy. "They are not warm, or outgoing," Lora said, "But there is nothing dishonourable in them. My mother," with quiet pride, "came from the Seven Isles to wed my father."

"And your father was Archenlandish?" Susan queried. Lora said he had been, and appeared ready to move on from the topic, but Susan couldn't help herself. She knew so little about the lady who was revealing to her the workings of the kingdoms with which Susan and her family would have dealings, and Susan felt she needed to know even a little bit more than what she already did, so with great care, she asked about Lora's father. "Is he a member of the court?" she wanted to know, and Lora, smiling, shook her head.

"He lives with my mother in a village south of Anvard," she smiled. "He was never a courtier. His family is here at court, but Father was the second son of a second son, so he felt it advisable that he go into a trade."

"And . . . . your mother? You said she came from the Seven Isles?" Susan desperately hoped she was not prying, and was at the same time almost certain she was doing just that, but Lora didn't seem to mind.

"She was . . . a surprise," the older Queen's eyes danced. "His family set things up for him before he even knew a match was being considered, and apparently he almost begged out of it, since he didn't feel it was fair of them to ask a gently-born lady to be the wife of a tradesman, but . . . she said she wouldn't hear of it. He says it went well for them. My mother does, too. All the same," she laughed, "she made me promise I would never grow to be such a mother as his!"

"And it was from her," Susan carefully brought the conversation from personal matters back to the topic at hand, "that you learned of the people there?"

"First from her," Lora confirmed, "and then, as Queen; but first from her. My mother always spoke of how much sterner the people of her homeland were than the people of Archenland; my mother," with a laugh, "is quite stern herself, and yet is apparently the merriest of her brothers and sisters. When I was a child, I was quite terrified at the thought of people even more sombre than she."

Much less strict than the people of the Seven Isles, it seemed, were the inhabitants of the Lone Islands, a good, jolly and very friendly collection of families ruled by the jolliest and friendliest family of the lot. "They are not a wealthy kingdom," Lora admitted, "as their chief source of income is the flock of sheep they graze on the smallest island, but they manage very well, considering. Doubtless a more unscrupulous regent could make something of the place; there have been those who tried to establish filthier trades, in the past, and there has been some instability in that respect, for of course worthy neighbours will not tolerate an unwholesome commerce such as certain of their governments sought to establish. Indeed, as a result of the instability the system of government changes as a matter of course every fifty to a hundred years, and they seem to be quite resigned to the uncertainty of it all. For the time being, though, the ruling family is much loved, and I don't expect we shall see any changes in the regime for some time to come. Perhaps after we are gone," she concluded, smiling, "but not, I think, for a while."

"And Calormen?" Susan wondered. "It seems the kingdom whose name appears most often in missives from the archives. Treaties, and peace agreements, and . . . the like. Is there some source of conflict between our lands?"

"You might put it so," Lora murmured, looking suddenly grave. "You see, one of the earliest points of contention between some of the early warlords of Calormen —before they called themselves Tisroc, you understand— and the kings of other lands was the question of Aslan."

"Question!" Susan was startled. "What question?"

"What question indeed," Lora said dryly. "But some people will make a question of anything, and I am afraid the group of persons who took it upon themselves to populate Calormen were just that sort of people. It started out well enough, I understand; that is, Archenland thought itself well rid of these people, and had no quarrel with their desire to leave and establish a kingdom of their own. Indeed, I believe it was even encouraged. They did as best by each other as they could, set up a sort of government and established the kingdom nicely, and it was not until the third generation, I think, that things began to go badly wrong between them."

Susan, listening, was conscious of acute horror as Lora described how an angry younger son, determined that Calormen had the capacity for much a much wider rule than had already been established, had killed the two brothers who stood between him and the seat of power, and, when warned that Aslan would reckon with him for what he had done, declared that while he was ruler in Calormen, there would be no Aslan there. He had instead claimed another being had appeared to him, and that this would be the one that all loyal Calormenes followed.

"He told them there was no Aslan?" Susan had first paled, then turned slightly green. Lora, keeping one eye on her guest, poured a fresh cup of tea and set it before the girl. Susan took it and sipped, welcoming the rush of heat that thawed her suddenly freezing fingers. "But, how could Aslan allow such a thing?"

"Because it is according to His nature," Lora explained gently. "He gave the Kings of the world the right to govern their kingdoms; he gave the Sons of Adam the authority to rule as they saw fit, and when a King in power denies Him, Aslan's own law means he must listen. I do not doubt, little cousin," wrapping a warm hand around Susan's chilly one, "that Aslan is still in Calormen. It is only that, because the rulers to whom he gave the power refuse to acknowledge the power of Him, Aslan himself has no place of power there."

"But . . . that's terrible," Susan said, and Lora inclined her head.

"It is terrible," she allowed, "but it is also as it must be. Do you see now, Susan, how much authority has been given to you? To your brothers, and your sister? Truly, the very way in which a kingdom comes to pass will determine forever the nature of that kingdom. A kingdom that begins by deception and fraud will be plagued by these forever after. The empire that makes its start with bloody revolution will never be known as anything but a warmonger forever more. And the land that begins in peace, with honour . . . your Narnia was sung into life, my dear. Your first King and Queen were chosen by Aslan, and you four came by Aslan's choice. As Narnia began, so shall it go on, for many years to come."

Some people, you may know, have a talent for singing, or dancing, or telling clever stories. Some can mimic animals or certain people so cleverly you would swear a pigeon had flown in, or your old Auntie was hiding under the bed. Much rarer than these, though, are the people who have the talent for not only speaking truth, but speaking it in exactly the right way, at exactly the right time, that it will make an impression on those who hear it for all the rest of their days. Queen Lora happened to be one such person, and sitting there, hearing her, Susan knew without doubt that whatever was to happen, and whatever else was to come, Narnia would not, in the end, be the worse for it.

I do not doubt Susan would have said something, eventually, in response to this, but before she had the chance, another little voice by her elbow cut in.

"Mama? Queen Susan?" Both ladies turned to find Corin standing there, solemn-faced and a little grubby, with Brownie in his hand. "I can't find my shoes."

Ten tiny, pink toes wiggled in the grass. His leather slippers were nowhere to be seen. Lora blinked twice and then Susan swallowed as smile as the older Queen, with a sigh, rose from her chair and took her son's hand in hers.

"Then we must look for them," she decided, and Susan ventured to put a question to the Prince.

"Where did you have them last?" she wondered, and Corin gave her a look of great pity.

"If I knew that," he explained, "I would know where they are now."

"Very true," Susan agreed, "so you would. Well, then," she, too, rose, "then I suppose there is nothing for it but to look for them until they are found."

The proposed course of action struck Corin as such a sensible one that he could not but agree with it, and so, with the aid of his mother, Susan, Brownie and, apparently, Sir Longboots, the quest was bravely begun. It wasn't until they heard the distant horns of the returning hunting party, however, that the right rock was at last overturned, and there, serving as a nesting spot for seven rescued blackbeetles, Corin's slippers were found

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** 'Tis the season for . . . gingerbread men! I just made two dozen of the little fellows, but decided that was too many and practiced some rapid population control. The whole house still smells of baking, though, and I recommend it for anybody looking to jump-start writing. It must be something about all the warm fuzzies, or perhaps it's the sugar overload. Whatever it is, it's keeping me going!

Up next: How Things are Handled on an Island, wherein a King and Queen try to figure such things out.


	8. How Things are Handled on an Island

How Things are Handled on an Island

O0O0O0O

I will not trouble to tell you every detail of Peter and Lucy's time on the island of Avra; it would all blur together quite quickly, I assure you. Suffice to say that there was a lot of eating and drinking, much discussion of the contents of the papers the High King and the little Queen had brought with them, and worst of all, more introductions than the young monarchs could keep track of.

You may not think introductions are such horrible things, but when they are as many as these were, you would soon understand. I am sure you have been at a party like that, where your host has, with every good intention, introduced you to so many people that by the end of it all you can remember are four Christian names, six surnames and an impossible number of gleaming, toothy smiles. This is exactly how it was for Peter and Lucy, except in the Lone Islands surnames were usually connected to the person's trade or place of residence, so instead of trying to sort out names like "Green" and "Brown" and "Walsheimer-Finkle" they had to keep track of such things as "Fletcher" and "Tanner" and "of the Western Pass by the Grey Rock" and it was proving a trying exercise.

To their credit, however, they never let it slip when they forgot a name, and instead busied themselves asking all sorts of questions about the individual's home and family, since as you must know, it's so much easier to remember a person's name if you actually know a little bit about him first.

"I think," Lucy said, as she and Peter walked down together to the council room that had been set aside for their use during their stay, "that it makes you care more when you know about them. You're less likely to forget people if you care about them, aren't you?"

"Much less," Peter smiled. "And on that note, do you remember who we are to meet with this week?"

"Yes, everyone from Felimath," Lucy said promptly. "There will be a few tradesmen and fishermen today, but most of those will come tomorrow; today it's just a whole lot of courtiers, mostly. A lot of 'of' and 'from the' in this lot, and I can't remember even half of them, but I plan to ask them about their homes until I care enough to really remember. Do you think that's all right? I mean, should we be able to remember all of them without . . . caring about them?"

"Well," said Peter doubtfully, as they reached the council room and Lucy preceded him inside, "I don't know. Maybe. But I think on the whole it's best that we actually _want_ to care about them, don't you? I mean, what sort of rulers would we be if we didn't really care about them, we just . . . told them what they wanted to hear, or what we wanted them to hear, and then did what we pleased? I think if we truly care about them, we'll be more likely to act in their best interests."

"I see," Lucy scrunched up her face as she climbed onto her chair, and Peter passed her half of the parchment on the table.

There was not as much parchment as you might expect, given all the work that had gone into preparing it. The actual number of petitions from the Lone Islands was quite low, since the population was fairly small to begin with and some of the families that had left Narnia no longer wanted to return anyway. That didn't make it any easier, though, since there was still a great deal of work to be done for each family. Every person who was meant to return had to be interviewed, and witnesses to the character of the families had to be called, so Lucy and Peter had spent a lot of the past month getting all the necessary papers in order. And in case you were wondering, not only is Narnian paperwork just as dull as paperwork in our world, it's also twice as time consuming, since they haven't things like ball-point pens and mimeograph machines to hurry the job along.

Still, there is something satisfying at looking at a thick, well-read pile of papers (or parchment, or vellum, or whatever sort of writing surface it happens to be) and knowing that you worked hard to bring it to completion. It was that glow of satisfaction that sustained Peter and Lucy as they took a few precious minutes before their Ministers arrived to go over the day's schedule between them, and iron out a few minute points of order. By the time the Ministers and Duke Lionel entered the chamber, the King and Queen were quite convinced they had sorted out as much as they could, and were even trying to smile at each other.

"Well, your Majesties," the Duke beamed at Peter and Lucy both, settling into his seat at Peter's right as a brown-and-white Talking Goat took up his place at Lucy's left, "you have a ready-made audience lining the corridors. Our cook has done what she can by them in the way of food, but what you're offering them means more than bread and wine ever could. So where shall we begin?"

Peter had thought he was ready for this, but now that the moment had actually arrived, he found himself wracked with uncertainty. Of course he knew it was so much more than a meal he was offering, and had known it, in theory, the whole time since they first began planning this. But now, looking at the name written in front of him, realising that he would shortly meet the person matched to the name . . . it gave him a very queer feeling.

Peter might have gone on staring at the name for quite some time, had a light touch on his hand not distracted him from it. Looking over, he found Lucy smiling encouragingly at him from where she sat on the very edge of the seat, her chin just inches above the surface of the table. She looked impossibly small, and yet, at the same time, impossibly ready. She didn't look scared, or uncertain; she was just smiling at him, and suddenly, inexplicably, Peter found he was smiling back.

Still smiling, Peter looked away from Lucy and directed his attention to the pile of names, lives and histories neatly assembled before him. He lifted the top sheet from the stack and read the name aloud. The door at the opposite end of the council room opened, the person thusly summoned stepped inside, and so it began.

O0O0O0O

The week passed well, for the greatest part, and they managed to hear all the petitioners they had scheduled for that block of time, so when the Ministers, Lone Islands nobility and Peter and Lucy all ventured to term the week a success, there were none who saw fit to challenge them.

And indeed, at the conclusion of the first week's interviews, for all that there had been certain sticky points, the monarchs were mostly encouraged. At the end of the second week, however, they found they were slightly less encouraged than they were wearied, and by the end of the third week, if you had asked them about it and they had been completely honest with you, they would have admitted that they were mostly just wearied. It wasn't that it was going badly, it was simply that the responsibility was so very, impossibly great; it was far more than they had really allowed themselves to realise before they began meeting people face to face, hearing the petitions they had read on paper brought to life and given voice by the very people who were making them.

The full realisation of his responsibility was more than a little daunting for Peter, who found more than once as he sat at the head of the long table and asked questions of his would-be subjects that they must surely doubt him, somehow. Even as he spoke, queried and commented on the various intricacies of the petitions, he felt that the people he addressed must be wondering how a boy who had less than half their years could call himself fit to reign over them as King. It was true that none of them ever even indicated half as much as this, every one of them down to the last nothing but deferential and courteous to their new King, but in Peter's heart of hearts he was convinced they must think him unfit or, at least, greatly unsuited for such a position of consequence, and the thought weighed heavily on him.

Lucy, for her part, perched on a chair and worked very hard not to swing her feet as she put her own questions to the people. She also spent a great deal of time watching faces, scrutinising every line, crease and freckle of every person who stood before them, vowing that not one of them should be lost in the sea of faces they encountered over the first three weeks of the interview process. Lucy was not willing that even one should be forgotten, and yet there were so very many of them, at times it seemed impossible that she could ever come to know them all, and she often laid awake at nights, worrying about this.

Then, as the interviews themselves concluded and a formal, final review of all petitions they had received and interviews conducted began in earnest, they began to get rather frustrated, too. It was not, as Peter observed more than once, the sort of process that allowed for any kind of quick decision. The people they had met so far were varied in temperament, to be sure, and as is usually the case when one is meeting a whole host of new people all at once, there were several that Peter and Lucy privately thought they would not care to be friends with at all, but as this had no bearing on the individual petitions for voyage to Narnia the young King and Queen worked hard to keep these particular opinions to themselves.

There were, of course, a few people that Peter and Lucy truly felt were not quite right. This might have been something that came up in the interview, or even a thought that struck one or both as they read over one another's notes at the end of the day. Sometimes it even presented in the petition itself, a detail or line that had gone unnoticed until then. As all good rulers do, though, no matter what the cause of their unease they also made sure to consult on the matter with those who advised them. They carefully considered all opinions offered, even those that did not in the slightest agree with their own. Some of the petitions they were not confident of were granted anyway on the strength of their Ministers' word, but for the most part the ruling would hold firm, and Peter and Lucy denied seventeen petitions in all.

At the end of the second month they emerged from the council chambers blinking and sore and generally trying to remember what it felt like to _not_ need to squint at line upon line of elaborate, cramped script on sheets of vellum or parchment or whatever it was called— by that point, if you had asked them, they would have said they really didn't care what it was called, they were just glad to be done with it.

"Will we post the lists before we leave," Lucy wondered, trudging up the stairs behind her older brother, "or shall we have Lionel and Gertilda wait to do it until after?"

"Hmm?" said Peter, who was busy shaking his hand in an effort to dislodge a stubborn bit of sealing wax from the depths of his newly-minted signet ring. Lucy repeated her question and Peter, after giving it some consideration (and giving his ring three more hefty, albeit futile, shakes) said he wasn't sure.

"I had thought at first we might ask to have them posted after we left, because that way all the people we've refused might have time to accept the fact that some of them mayn't come, but then I got to thinking that might look as though we were sort of running away from all of them, and I shouldn't like any of them to think we'll always be fleeing at the first hint of conflict or anything like that, so I'm not so sure as I once was. Perhaps we ought to post them tomorrow, instead, so they've at least a day to appeal."

"But are we hearing appeals?" Lucy reached out, caught Peter's hand between both of her own and deftly plucked the bit of wax from the depths of his seal. "There."

"Thanks. No, I hadn't planned to hear appeals, but— but at the same time, if we wait to have the list posted until after we leave, I just can't help but feel that we'll look rather . . ."

"Cowardly," Lucy guessed, and Peter flushed.

"Well. Maybe."

"But that shouldn't matter, should it?" Lucy frowned, puffing a little as her short legs navigated the steep, narrow spiral staircase that led to the guest wing of the small castle. "I mean, it shouldn't matter if we _look _cowardly, should it? Not if we know the truth. And of course," abstractedly, "if the truth is what it is, in our case— that we aren't any such thing. Unless . . ." she looked up at her brother in sudden confusion. "_Are_ you afraid?"

From anyone else it might have sounded scornfully incredulous, and from anyone else, it quite probably would have been. Coming from Lucy, however, it was simply honest curiosity, and perhaps a little surprise— surely, her tone implied, such a thing was impossible for Peter, and yet if he were to tell her otherwise she would accept this new truth without judgment. Peter knew this, so he didn't rush to make his reply; rather he thought it out first, and spoke only as they reached the top of the stairs.

"I'm not afraid of people," he said at last, as they emerged into the corridor and he paused to let Lucy catch her breath, "nor of them being cross with me, or angry. But . . . I'm very much afraid of disappointing them. I'm afraid of seeing the looks on their faces when they find out that what they hoped for won't happen after all. I don't," hastily, at seeing the question forming in Lucy's face, "think we made wrong decisions; we certainly didn't make hasty ones. Every petition we refused ought to have been refused. I think we chose aright. But . . . but it still doesn't mean I want to disappoint them. I am sorry I must, and . . . I'm afraid, I think, to see them when they learn that I have done so."

"Well," said Lucy, having caught her breath and considered her brother's stumbling, heartfelt reply, "I don't see that there's anything cowardly in that. But if you like, we could ask someone else's opinion first, just to be sure."

Peter, looking on Lucy's honest little face as she so solemnly considered his problem and decided that they had better seek outside counsel before reaching their final resolution, couldn't restrain a quick burst of laughter. Lucy looked up, confused and a little hurt —she was still not so far from her old self that she forgot what it was like to be ridiculed for being younger than the rest— and Peter, seeing her hurt, was quick to sober just long enough to explain himself.

"I'm sorry, Lucy," he said. "I didn't mean to laugh. I just couldn't help but think . . . well, of what our lives have become. We're so anxious to not make a wrong choice now that we can't seem to think anything without asking somebody else about it first, and— I don't know. Somehow it just made me laugh. It's good, though; I think it's what might make us not too horrible at this ruling business. I can't think that Kings and Queens who are _too_ sure of themselves make a very good job of things."

Then he grinned down at her, so very much all at once a big brother and a King, and in that one smile, Lucy saw it all. She caught her breath, and her fierce little heart stilled, hitched, and sped up in her chest, because in her brother's smile she had seen, in one blinding instant, both the best of who Peter had always been and a stunning, rich, and glowing promise of all that he might become. Even more than that, though, in all she saw that Peter could become, Lucy saw what she, too, could be; not just a little girl sitting in a chair too big for her and struggling to act grown up when she asked solemn questions and had such questions asked of her, but rather a very valuable and necessary somebody to whom Peter could turn when he couldn't make the biggest decisions on his own; a Queen, in fact, to whom all sorts of people would one day turn, when the gravest and hardest choices had to be made for the good of all.

It was very big, and grand, and not a little frightening a thought for such a very little girl, who was still so very unsure of such a lot about her current place in just about everything. But it was also the best and clearest idea Lucy had yet had as to what it meant to really and truly be a Queen, and it was this that prompted her to stick out one small hand for Peter to take, and squeeze, and hold.

"We'll ask them," she decided gravely. "The Ministers, I mean. I think . . . I think we'd better ask for good advice as much as we can, right now, because soon enough we'll need it to be a habit, if we hope to make any kind of good come of this at all."

From anybody else, such words might have sounded rather dire and grim. But from Lucy, Peter thought, they somehow came out only as cause for hope. He squeezed her hand a little tighter, and said he thought she was right.

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** If I told you even a very small part of what it took for me to finish this chapter, I don't think you'd believe it! The first half has been written for months (six months to the very day, in fact) but getting the second half hammered out was like pulling multiple mouthfuls of teeth. Hens' teeth, even. I do have other Narnia stories started and/or nearly finished, but I told myself they weren't going anywhere until I'd gotten this chapter done.

My thanks to all who have faithfully reviewed the previous chapters, and my apologies for not responding to you more promptly, nor even individually, this time; I do normally love to thank everyone person-by-person, but that fell by the wayside and I very much look forward to getting back to it. The good news, though, is that with setup mostly accomplished we are finally getting into the thick of things, plot-wise. The thick of things will not, however, be gotten into very quickly, as I am not currently able to guarantee anything resembling regular updates— but then, those who have been following along from the start will hardly be shocked to learn that!

I do promise to update as regularly as real life permits; this story is actually plotted to death and beyond, so it only remains to find time in which to put it to paper. Or, put it to pixels. Whichever. Hopefully the tradeoff will be something that reads much more easily than this has to date, and readers who will therefore enjoy it all the more! My thanks to everybody who's taken the time to offer opinions and feedback so far; I really do treasure each observation, remark and suggestion so much.

Up next: Hailing the Hillside, wherein a King and Queen conclude their business, take a walk, make their good byes and embark on another sea voyage.


	9. Hailing the Hillside

Hailing the Hillside

O0O0O0O

The lists were to be posted the morning of the Narnian departure. This decision, although simple in substance and statement, was not reached until nearly three quarters of an hour had passed with Peter and Lucy closeted with a very small and fully trusted handful of Ministers from Narnia and the Lone Islands themselves. Opinions were greatly varied and often strenuously voiced, but everyone managed to keep his or her temper and in the end a consensus was reached that it was in no way any form of cowardice for the High King and Queen Lucy to want to give those who had been denied their request a little space of time to come to terms with the blow.

"Appeals made the morning after a rejection are invariably heartfelt but poorly reasoned," one elderly lord from Duke Lionel's highest court observed, and Peter received this truism with solemn respect.

"Then it is decided," he said, and Lucy looked at him encouragingly from where she sat at his side. "We will leave it to His Grace to make free with our decision the morning following our departure. We will hear no appeals until a twelvemonth has passed, and those we then receive must be prefaced with a letter of formal petition. Lastly," looking a bit less like a man-to-be and more like a very relieved boy as he cast his gaze around the table, "we are indebted to you for your service, gentlemen; ladies. Narnia will not become all she is meant to be without friends and counsellors such as yourselves; I think myself a fortunate king indeed to have such as you to advise me."

This speech was met by a smattering of applause, many embarrassed 'harrumphs' and much clearing of throats. Lucy, her eyes shining, accepted Peter's arm and let him escort her from the chamber. Then, standing right there in the corridor, she turned to him and flung her arms tightly round his waist.

"Oh, Peter," she said, "you know, you were simply magnificent in there!"

"Well," said Peter, and might have harrumphed himself, had he but possessed the advanced years required to carry the thing off with some grace. "Well, I don't know about that . . . but what of you, Lucy? You were splendid! You stared down that one Minister who said that we might do well to consider how we would look to our subjects; I don't know how you ever found the nerve."

"It wasn't _what_ he said so much as the _way_ he said it," Lucy reflected, slipping her hand confidingly within her brother's and matching her steps to his. "I mean, if he had just said it in a sort of _thinking_ way, I wouldn't have minded at all. Lots of people think out loud, don't they? It helps clear your head, I think. But he sounded so disapproving and judgmental, I just _knew_ he was truly thinking it of you, Peter— he thought that you were cowardly for wanting to leave. And I know you aren't, so I just couldn't let him think such things. It wasn't wrong of me to stare at him that way, was it? I was certain it would be rude to speak to him the way I wanted to, and I don't think Queens are allowed to call people out—" she paused here when Peter suffered from a sudden, fierce choking fit— "but I just felt as if I must do _something_. So I only did what I could."

"And as long as you do only what you can, Lucy," Peter grinned, squeezing the hand tucked so trustingly in his own, "there will not be a boy over five nor a man under ninety in all our kingdom who dares question my honour. Not with you serving as so fierce and fit a champion for it." And the tug he gave one of her wispy-tipped plaits was so brotherly of him, so very simply _Peter_, that Lucy couldn't resist taking one glorious little skipping step before she looked up at him with impish glee, a marvellous idea overtaking her.

"Let's go for a walk!" she said, and Peter betrayed surprise.

"Why, what did you think we were doing now?"

"Oh, we're walking, but we aren't _going_ for a walk. I mean, let's get someone to take us somewhere we haven't yet been; somewhere we've not had time to see. I want to see some of this place before we leave, don't you? I want to see where these people have lived for so long. What about Felimath? I should love to walk all over Felimath, it looked like green velvet when we passed it on the ship."

"That's where the sheep are, isn't it?" Peter asked doubtfully.

"Yes, I think so; but you don't mind sheep, do you?"

"Not mind them, no, I just . . . well, I wonder at your wanting to spend our last day here consorting with livestock."

"Well I had thought," Lucy said gently, "that we might perhaps consort a little with the shepherds too. Or at least see where they live; they, and the fishermen and all their families as well . . . after all, we've spent a lot of time at banquets with the noblemen and women who will be coming to Narnia, but they don't often invite fishermen to banquets. And yet some of the fishermen will soon be our subjects too, won't they? So hadn't we better spend some time with them, too?"

Here Peter got a little red, said yes of course they should, and would Lucy kindly please not call him an idiot for thinking she had wanted only to spend her day playing with sheep? And Lucy, who was kind by nature, had assured him in perfect truthfulness that the thought of speaking that way to her brother had never crossed her mind.

O0O0O0O

Peter and Lucy knew that the journey to Felimath would be completed, by necessity, in a boat. It was their desire, however, to find a very small, insignificant boat, as both wished to escape the shores of Avra with minimal fanfare— something that would be quite a feat, really, given that they had been generously fêted at every turn since their arrival two weeks before. So as Peter went to inform a few people of their decision —lest Duke Lionel believe they had been kidnapped when they vanished from the castle— Lucy found a maid who worked in the guest wing of the castle and asked if there might be somebody willing to take them across the water without drawing any attention to the fact. The maid, it proved, had several brothers whom she felt confident would all be honoured to accept the challenge of smuggling Royalty across the channel to the sheep fields, and went off at once to make certain that this was true.

When the girl returned with the news that the boat was readied and awaiting their pleasure, Lucy would have immediately fallen in step with her and gone to fetch Peter to the waterside, had something in maid's face not seemed familiar. The Queen squinted a little, tipped her head, and then it came to her.

"Oh!" she said, "I know you, don't I? That is, I mean of course I know you, I see you almost every day, but . . . your parents, are they the Red Road Fishers?"

"My parents," the girl smiled, "and my four oldest brothers, yes."

"But they're coming to Narnia!" Lucy cried. "Your whole family is, isn't that so?"

"My parents are," the maid said, "and six of my brothers; but not Von. They are leaving Von the cottage for his own; he is to be wed next year at high summer, you see, and he and his bride will need a place to live. My parents had—" she broke off, hesitant, then squared her shoulders and finished her sentence. "My parents had nothing else to give them."

"Well," said Lucy, smiling in such a way as to assure her newfound friend that she found nothing at all about that to look down upon, "that's lovely, and how marvellous to know that we will be neighbours. For Peter and Edmund —that's my other brother, you know, King Edmund— have said that we should use the land around Cair Paravel to rebuild a fishing village that was once there. That is, it is still _sort_ of there, only it's rather in pieces at the moment. We talked of moving it, but the merpeople and the naiads tell us that the fishing is the best just beyond the cove we use as our harbour, and we think that all the fishermen will be best served to make home there. I hope you will come visit us often!"

"Oh . . ." the girl looked rather awkward, and much the way you or I would look when somebody says they hope to see us at a party that we would not dream of attending, "oh, that is very kind of you, I'm sure, but I will not be going with them." Then, at Lucy's confusion, she found herself compelled to elaborate. "Two of my sisters will, but my other sisters and I could not be sure of work. Here we have an income and can help those at home; for all of us to stay at home would be an impossible burden. Only our two youngest sisters will go with Mama and Papa."

At this news Lucy was momentarily crestfallen, but rallied with remarkable speed and impulsively clasped the older girl's hand in her own. "But you would come?" she said. "If you and your sisters could be sure of a place to work, such as you have here? You would come?"

The poor maid looked much alarmed at being grasped so suddenly, but managed to assure Lucy that she would come, if it such a thing were possible, and thought two of her sisters might come as well.

"Then you must," Lucy said. "I do mean it, you must— I am so very sorry, I don't even know your name."

"I— Gerda, your Majesty," the girl said, seeming to suddenly remember that the little girl clutching her hand was in fact full-fledged Royalty. Lucy, hampered by no such recollection, merely continued to clutch Gerda's hand and beam at her.

"Then you _must_ come. Susan and I will see to it that you find work. I am sure there are no end of positions in the castle, and Mrs Clogg —the Head Housekeeper, you know; she rather alarms me sometimes but Susan says she's frightfully efficient, and I think that describes her perfectly— will find a place for you there if only we tell her to. I can't imagine anything more awful than having to leave my family behind for such a very long time; _do_ please say you'll come."

Gerda, her hand held and her heart won by the sunny-smiled little Queen, could only choke back a smile of her own as she said yes, of course, it would be her joy and honour to oblige her Queen and come home to Narnia with her family.

"But please, your Majesty," she said, and timidly wiggled her hand just enough to persuade Lucy to drop it, "if you and King Peter still want passage across the channel, we'll need to go now."

At this truthful observation Lucy at once apologised profusely, fell into step behind the older girl and said that of course Gerda was quite right, they must go straight away. She also, as they climbed the stairs, said that Peter, if he wasn't wondering what had become of them and their boat by now, could only have fallen fast asleep from waiting.

O0O0O0O

Peter had not, as it turned out, fallen asleep, but he had been on the verge of setting out to look for his sister himself when she appeared in the doorway, a very awkward and embarrassed-looking maid in tow. Gerda was introduced to her King as they made their way down to the water's edge, and once they reached the water's edge Gerda's four oldest brothers were also introduced to Peter and Lucy both.

The Red Road Fishers, I may tell you now, are a very large family, both in numbers and in physical proportion. The girls run tall and the men run taller, as well as very broad about the shoulders. Peter and Lucy, for all that the Fisher men bowed very low and respectfully, and treated them with a rowdy sort of courtesy that was particularly refreshing after all the polished manners of the court, felt that their courteous hosts were so very large as to make both young monarchs feel much like the children they were.

"And yet," Lucy would say later, "it's not as if they ever behaved as though we were children, was it? They had a way of behaving as though we were even more grown up than they, although I think that any one of them could have tossed the pair of us over one shoulder and not felt any the worse for it."

Peter would agree that it was so. The King and Queen sat in the bow of the boat belonging to the eldest Red Road Fisher, Von, he who was to be married at high summer. Peter put a few questions to Von about the nature of his trade, to which Von responded promptly and with a sort of honest deference that made Peter feel more a man than he had in all his time spent conferring with noblemen. Soon the two were engaged in deep conversation concerning the intricacies of channel and river fishing compared to open sea fishing as the boat made its way across the open water, and the boats of Von's brothers followed in their wake.

Lucy, for her part, sat with her hands in her lap and her face turned toward the channel mouth. She was eager to see Felimath, of course, but being on the water and realising they would so very soon be setting out once more for parts unknown . . . it was a little daunting. She had loved the time they spent with Lionel and Gertilda, with the rowdy, rosy family and all their equally round, rosy, merry subjects. Even time spent fussing over papers wasn't so terrible, when you knew you were doing it to bring people home. And now . . .

Lucy was not conscious of having sighed aloud, but as the boat ground gently into the sandy shores of Felimath harbour, Peter turned to look sharp askance at his little sister. Her sunny face was somewhat stilled, her expression one better suited to a woman much older than she.

"Lu?" Peter put a gentle hand on her arm, and Lucy jumped a little.

"Oh! I'm sorry, I was thinking . . . but are we here already?"

They were, and Von was waiting to offer his hand in aiding the Queen to alight. She accepted, her tiny hand becoming quite swallowed up in his broad, callused palm. One foot got a bit damp when a pesky wave surged up unexpectedly, but Lucy only laughed, darted farther up on the beach and shook her foot.

"It will dry," she predicted, smiling once more, and Peter wondered if he might have imagined the more solemn look on her face. Certainly she seemed quite restored to herself, readily accepting an invitation to visit the Red Road Fisher cottage on behalf of both of them and falling into step between Gerda and a large Fisher man called Bain.

Bain seemed to be a favourite bother of Gerda's, for over Lucy's head the two exchanged much gentle teasing and several good-natured jokes. The little Queen lifted her face to follow each exchange with rapt fascination as Peter walked behind them with the other three Fisher brothers, who talked of tides and netmaking and any number of other things that left Peter feeling both completely out of his depth and greatly intrigued. He ventured to put a question or two to the men, and found himself promptly inundated with information.

The conversation was warm and friendly but it did make it tricky to properly appreciate the island itself, which was a pity. Felimath is the prettiest of the Lone Islands, low lying and carpeted with green, ringed half-way around with yellow sand, black sea-wall and cosy fishermen's cottages, and studded with fluffy sheep. The greatest part of the population is clustered about the cove and lives in a long strip of cottages housing most of the Lone Islands fishermen, who take their names from aspects of their own family homes that distinguish them from the others. This is why there are Blue Roof Fishers, Two Chimneys Fishers, and, of course, the Red Road Fishers, as well as many more.

The Red Road Fishers are so called, not because the road on which they live is red (all the fishermen live on the same road, a sandy, gravel-strewn track that is separated from the beach and cove by a sea wall of large, black boulders), but because their cottage is built at the foot of the red hill-track, a narrow trail of deep red dirt that carves its way directly up the hillside to the highest point of Felimath. The monarchs saw this for themselves when they reached the cottage itself, and the chatter amongst the Red Road Fishers broke off in favour of loud hails aimed at those within the family home.

"Hello, the house!" the cry went up, and at once a flood of people poured forth from the little dwelling to swamp family and new friends alike. Peter and Lucy both remembered Gerda's parents well on sight; Gard and Bea were a tall, kindly couple, work roughened and slightly careworn, but warm and generous all the same. It was with greatest difficulty that the monarchs were able to beg off an invitation to dinner, citing their desire for a quick tour of the island before returning to ready themselves for the voyage home.

"But then Landan and Serra must go with you!" insisted Bea. "Isn't it so, Father?"

"Indeed, indeed it's so, Mother," Gard nodded ponderously. "Indeed, it's so."

Landan and Serra were the youngest son and daughter of the house, and their little faces shone at the idea of serving as personal guides to the monarchs when they were on Felimath. Both were so deliriously excited at the prospect that neither Peter nor Lucy had the heart to refuse, so off they set, the King and Queen following the two younger children up the steep track cut into the hill above the cottage. The trail was not wide enough to permit them to walk abreast and so they went up single file, carefully picking their way along a steep, red ribbon of dirt that snaked and twisted its way through the verdant hillside.

"These are the shepherds' huts," Landan explained, barely pausing as he waved his hand at a cluster of little dwellings about halfway up the hill. "There aren't as many Shepherds as there are Fishers but they are very nice, and sometimes give us sweets."

"A high recommendation indeed," Peter said solemnly, and Landan, suspecting no irony, nodded enthusiastically. They then continued onward, Landan narrating every step of their journey with great and conscious importance. From him they learned the intricacies of the lambing season and the business of reading the tides; with his help they grew to better understand the delicate political balance maintained between the few Shepherds, who held most of Felimath, and the many Fishers who held but a single road of their own, and any other number of daily details that would have looked perhaps petty to a great lord but were the life and breath and living of those to whom they mattered most. More importantly, too, Peter and Lucy learned these things from a child who had not yet seen the need for diplomacy, and so shared each detail with a sort of reckless candour that was both charming and a great aid to understanding.

The little boy was, as near as the monarchs could tell, two or three years younger than Lucy and possessed at least four times her energy. Serra, not very much younger than Landan, was in contrast perfectly silent, and seemed to be made entirely of tangled dark curls and a dress and eyes that were rather too big for her tiny frame and face. She stayed clinging to Landan's side for the duration of the tour —and a more knowledgeable, self-assured tour guide than Landan could not have been found for the monarchs had they searched all three islands over— but near the end of their journey, after they had circumnavigated the upper swells of the island, watched a few late lambs gambolling clumsily around their placid mothers and discussed the daily business of life on Felimath, she made an abrupt transference. She did it in perfect silence and with utter lack of fanfare, but Lucy, who had been looking at her at the time, saw it happen.

As they returned to the Red Road that would lead them back down the hill to the cottage and drank in the view of the channel sparkling before them, Doorn and Avra lying serenely in the near distance, Serra moved, vanishing from Landan's side, darting three steps backward and taking up residence in close proximity to Peter's left leg. She grabbed hold of his hand —and her little hand was not only rather grubby from being so much out-of-doors, but also still quite sticky from a porridge her mother had fed her for dinner— and looked up adoringly at him.

Peter, for his part, seemed a little dumbstruck at his sudden acquisition of a hanger-on, but he was an older brother himself and a rather good one at that, so he let her stay, and said nothing about it as they continued on down the path. When they reached the cottage once more Landan bolted for the door, hollering for his parents, but Serra stayed where she was, beaming up at Peter in silent, slavish devotion. Lucy tried to be too polite to grin about it.

"I— erm—" Peter tried to remember how he had dealt with his sisters when they were this small, but he had been quite small himself at the time, so the memories were foggy at best. "Serra, it was . . . very nice to meet you, but I think perhaps we must . . . erm . . . Lucy?"

Lucy helped as best she could, but in the end it was Bea Fisher who emerged from the cottage to peel her youngest from the leg of the High King and apologise on the little girl's behalf.

"Oh, no," said Peter, flustered but a little pleased, "no, she wasn't bothering me, she . . . uh . . . Serra? Serra, we . . . you'll visit us, will you? You'll come up to the castle when you come to live in Narnia?"

The blinding smile on the child's face was in every respect as affirmative as a spoken reply would have been, and as Bain Fisher rowed the King and Queen back to Avra, Peter sat beside his sister with a rather foolish, fond smile on his face. Lucy, seeing the expression, smiled too, and put her hand in his.

"At least," she said impishly, "his Majesty can be certain of _one_ loyal subject in the Narnia we seek to build."

And Peter fast proved that he might be King and Knight and any other number of lordly things, but he had not yet grown too noble to consider pinching a cheeky little sister.

O0O0O0O

There is little that remains to be said of Peter and Lucy's time in the Lone Islands. It was the first of what would prove to be many visits over the coming years, and the alliances that were formed during that first meeting would only cement into the truest and most lasting friendships as the years passed. The love and respect in which his subjects held Duke Lionel ensured that the Lone Islands were to become one of Narnia's most loyal protectorates, for the Duke would have brooked no treason against the boy and girl who had conducted themselves with such easy, regal joy the entire time they were guests in his home.

Parting was, of course, a terrible thing, since everyone had only just become such good friends, and little Winky, held in Gertilda's arms as they stood at the docks to see the _Splendour Hyaline _off, squalled in a most appalling fashion until Lucy caught him up in her arms and showered him with kisses.

"When I come back," she told him, "you will have grown so much, Winky. You will be big and strong and tall . . . you will be walking, and talking, I think . . . I daresay you might have forgotten me entirely. But I promise I will not forget you, and whenever we do come back I will bring you presents and toys and so many sweets that you will be sick all over me when next I pick you up to say good bye."

"Words to warm a mother's heart," Gertilda said, making Lucy laugh and promise that of course she would bring sweets for Gertilda, too.

"And thank you," she said, looking earnestly up at the Duchess. "We had . . . oh! the loveliest time."

Then Gertilda reached out and embraced the little Queen, petting her hair as if she were one of her own daughters, and Peter and Duke Lionel exchanged a very awkward, raspy-throated good bye and a firm handclasp that quickly turned into a hug as well. Then the King and Queen walked up the gangplank to board their ship, newly stocked with provisions for the journey to the Seven Isles.

"Are you sad to leave?" Lucy asked softly, as she and Peter stood at the rail and waved to the uproariously-cheering crowd. Peter nodded.

"Yes," he said. "Are you?"

"Very much," she said, and her hand sought his for a reassuring squeeze. "But I think . . . Peter, I'm also terribly excited. Just think— soon, we'll be doing this all over again, in a brand new place, with new people we have never met!"

And Peter thought it would probably be very impolitic to tell his sister that what excited her was that which scared him the most.

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** I suppose that "there's so much more I want to write besides this!" is a poor reason to use when motivating oneself to finish a story, but it seems to be working for me with this one, so I won't question it too closely. This was actually one of two different stories I could have begun after concluding _Worlds in Dream_, and in hindsight, I really should have bucked chronology and grabbed hold of the one I _really_ wanted to write, but . . . well you can see how _that_ went. I have discovered that there is a little something to be said for raw inspiration after all!

Up next: Dealing with Difficult People, in which we see a King and Queen attempt to do just that.


	10. Dealing with Difficult People

Dealing with Difficult People

O0O0O0O

"I could wring ten necks tonight!" Peter fumed, and Lucy looked up from her seat on the couch in deep alarm.

"Peter!" she said. "Peter, shut the door, first!"

Peter did so with such vigour that the mighty oak portal might have taken three of his fingers clean off, had he not pulled them clear just in time. Lucy pursed her lips and watched Peter glare at the door for a minute before he finally turned and stomped over to slump into the chair across from his sister.

"Ten?" she said at last, and Peter buried his face in his hands.

"At the very least," he mumbled, and Lucy bit her lip.

"Oh, dear."

They then sat for a minute in tense, if companionable, silence, and tried not to think about how very trying the people of the Seven Isles were proving to be. It might not have been so bad, really, had they not just come from the Lone Islands where everyone was so merry and easygoing, or even if they'd had the opportunity before reaching the Seven Isles to listen to Queen Lora describe the inhabitants of her mother's homeland. As it was, though, they found themselves in a land populated by people who, though certainly honest and upright in every way, were nevertheless unaccustomed to merrymaking, or even smiling overmuch. The vast majority of them also took everything one said at face value, which meant Peter was having to be very careful of his use of irony, and Lucy had pretty well given up joking entirely; it got to be quite trying, having to explain everything so much.

"What was it this time?"

"It—" Peter looked up in vague bewilderment. "I can't even be sure. I think it started with the treaties I agreed to witness. There was some sort of polite feud going on over some orchard or other, and they finally came to an agreement and I was asked to bear witness. I didn't mind at all but one of our ministers —Ruggle, you know, that nervous Dwarf— worried it might show favouritism of some sort, and I didn't see how but you know that I don't really know enough about these things yet to make a good argument against something like that so I just sort of stood there like an idiot in front of all of them, and then somebody made a remark, and I think it was well deserved, really, because if Ruggle had a problem with this he ought not to have voiced it in front of everyone, but he took offence and made some remark of his own, and it went very badly from there."

"Goodness," Lucy looked worried, "do you really mean to say they were standing there and slinging insults at one another? In the middle of a . . . well, whatever you call the ceremony for signing a treaty over an orchard."

"I don't know that there is such a word, and no, it wasn't anything so obvious as that. You know how grown ups are," with a sudden, brief reversion to boyishness, "grown ups, and diplomats too. They won't come out and say a thing and get it all in the open, they insist on making one remark that could have been inoffensive in one way, except that you can tell by the way they say it, they really mean it quite another."

"Oh, yes," Lucy said with great feeling. "I know exactly what you mean. It's the same as when a woman says 'my, what an _interesting_ gown. Such a _singular_ creation!' and smiles at you in an awful, brittle way, and you know she means that it's so odd and different that nobody ever ought to like it, and you were a fool to wear it."

"Lucy," Peter looked at his sister in surprise, "did somebody say that to you?"

"Just once," said Lucy, and scowled.

"Lucy," Peter looked concerned, but Lucy shook her head.

"I tried to be very diplomatic, Peter, and I think I was. It didn't even happen here, it was just once at the Lone Islands and it didn't matter so very much. I only meant to say that I knew what you meant. People can have an awful way of being two-faced about things, can't they? Or, in this case, two-phrased."

"People of every species," Peter agreed, and managed to find a very slight smile for his little sister, who promptly beamed back.

"There," she said encouragingly. "Now, what of the rest of it? You said you wanted to wring ten necks. Was there more that happened?"

"Oh, yes, there was more," Peter grimaced. "After that whole mess was more or less sorted —and I did sign my name as witness after all, so you can expect to hear from Ruggle about that, I am afraid— the Duck made a remark that I know he intended to lighten the mood, except three nobles from the court and one of our own Ministers all took it seriously and there was another to-do over that, and in the end King Riordan and I just escaped the council chambers and walked in the halls for a while and didn't say anything at all. Lucy," with great feeling, "you've no idea what it is to walk with a man who actually understands that it can be a relief to just not have to say anything at all."

"I expect in his line of work he's come to feel the same way," Lucy observed, and Peter said yes, he supposed that she had something there.

"But all the same," he said, "I just think —and I don't mean this in a rude way or anything like that, of course, and I hope you know—"

"Peter," Lucy interrupted, a little alarmed, "I'm still _me_, you know. You needn't qualify everything you say to _me_."

"No," Peter said, and again a ghost of a smile found its way to his lips, "no, I suppose I needn't. What I meant to say was that I just think people here might take things a trifle more seriously than can possibly be . . . well, as Susan would put it, than can possibly be really _good_ for them."

"Yes. Yes, I see that. Only . . . I don't suppose they can help it," Lucy said, after a moment's reflection.

"No, no," Peter shook his head. "You're right. They can't. Not really. Not if it's the only way of being that they've ever known, and the only way they have ever been. And they truly are good people, mostly . . . King Riordan's counsel is certainly wise, and sound, and he never pushes it on me or anything like that, he simply offers it, and . . . and mostly I think I'll be taking it. He never treats me as a child, either, and that's more than I can say even for some of the noblemen we met on the Lone Islands. They're the same mix of people you find anywhere, really, only . . . only . . ."

"Only," Lucy took up, "it really would be nice if they knew how to _laugh_."

"Yes," Peter said, and smiled at the little Queen who, even at her most earnest and frustrated moments, seemed always to have the promise of laughter hovering in the corners of her eyes. "Yes, I think I should like it very much if they knew how to laugh."

"Perhaps we might teach them, by and by," Lucy pondered. "We could call it a sort of diplomatic mission."

"And if diplomacy fails, we declare war on them until they learn to laugh?" Peter suggested, drawing a giggle from his sister.

"Very well," Lucy smiled, "perhaps it's not the cleverest idea . . . still," she tapped a thoughtful little finger on the cover of the book she had been reading before Peter burst in upon her, "still, I think I will . . . I don't know. Something. It's never good, I think," with genuine concern, "when people don't know how to laugh. It makes me sad."

"Well," said Peter, "we can't have that." Then with brotherly devotion he leaped up from his seat, pounced upon Lucy and set about tickling his little sister with chivalrous abandon until, thoroughly weakened, teary-eyed and rendered completely helpless by the force of her own mirth, Lucy was no longer sad.

O0O0O0O

Although sadness passed quickly for Lucy as a general rule, frustration did not. This was especially problematic because in the Seven Isles, Lucy found all too many things to frustrate her, and it was terribly unfortunate, she thought, that just when she ought to be at her most gracious and her most diplomatic, she found herself wanting more badly than she ever had in her whole life to lose her temper entirely, and perhaps even slap somebody into the bargain. Queens, of course, don't slap people (or at least they shouldn't) so Lucy kept her little hands still at her sides, but that didn't mean she didn't have her moments.

The Seven Isles, the Narnians learned not long after their arrival, seemed to take a very dim view of women in politics, and Lucy, though a very small woman, and not exactly even entirely a woman yet, was undeniably female, and therefore seemed to have fallen afoul of some long-held tradition that even the very nicest diplomats of the Seven Isles would clearly have rather died than overthrow. So, after much private debate on this matter between the two monarchs and their ministers, and then between Peter and their ministers, and finally just between Peter and Lucy (and this was the teariest and most heated debate of the lot, for Peter despised the idea that Lucy might be so undeservedly short-changed whereas Lucy, by that point, was actually prepared to be very understanding about things), they had decided that now was not the time to tread on toes. So Lucy, on their seventh day in the Seven Isles, had retired herself from the council chambers with a grace that rather awed Peter to see, and from that point on she mostly only tried very hard to make polite conversation with women who were more than three times her age.

It went badly.

Lucy, lacking Susan's easy grace when dealing with adults, had to work very hard not to behave as the little girl they all seemed to expect her to be, but it did her little good as far too many of the ladies seemed determined to see her in no other way but that of their own choosing. The fact that she was actually, by anyone's definition, a very little girl was one on which Lucy quite consciously chose not to dwell, deciding that a foreign country was not the place to take the time to figure out how she could best become what she was meant to be. At home, yes, of course there would be time for her to sort out the oddity of being a queen and being a child at the same time. At home there would be Susan to help her think it through; Susan, whom she trusted, Susan, who would poke her neck when she washed it but who would also listen with loving concern as Lucy poured out her every heartbreak and struggle in the privacy of their own chambers, rather than sitting all by herself, alone (and very angry) on a low couch in a room that wasn't hers in a home that didn't belong to her, glowering mutinously at having been more or less shamed into leaving a dinner party earlier than all the other guests because she —a Queen!— had been asked by a woman there if perhaps she oughtn't be running along to bed now, so she wouldn't be too tired in the morning.

"Next they shall be giving me dollies and sweeties and petting my hair!" Lucy fumed, kicking her little slippered heels against the legs of the unoffending piece of furniture that supported her. Her heels struck the solid oak frame and hurt almost unbearably for a moment, but at least the pain was a distraction from her anger— futile anger that Lucy knew full well was unbecoming of even a little girl, much less a queen.

"I shouldn't be angry," she told herself, "I really mustn't be angry." However, after a moment more of sitting she found that particular edict was too tricky to follow, and so she altered it a little. "I _may_ be angry, but only when being angry can help me do something to make things better. I just mustn't sit here and be angry and not do anything about it, or else I think it will sit in my stomach and make me sick, eventually."

For Lucy was, in her own way, an extremely gown-up person for a little girl only just turned nine.

"If I mayn't be angry without doing something to fix it," she went on, calming down even a little as she spoke the words quietly aloud, "then I must decide if I will do something or not, so I can see if I am allowed to be angry this time." That settled, she tried to think of what she might reasonably and diplomatically do to fix this particular situation.

"I shouldn't," she realised at last, "have left when Lady Bel said what she did. I excused myself properly, of course, and thanked Queen Irine for the food all of that, but I did still leave. And that woman probably either now thinks she's gotten the better of me, or," with a spirit of charity to which none of her other siblings would likely have been equal in the same situation, "perhaps she didn't even know there was anything wrong in what she said. Perhaps she only saw that I was a small girl and forgot for just a moment that I am a Queen as well, and she ought by rights address me as 'Your Majesty' first and 'Ma'am' after that, and not Dear Little Lucy . . . which perhaps I was wrong to mind when she did it, if she only saw me as a little girl."

Quite calmed and hardly angry at all, now, Lucy considered just a moment longer, then decided that there was nothing for it but for her to return to Queen Irine's dinner party.

"For I didn't actually come right out and say I was excusing myself for the evening, although I suppose they all must have thought it, since they all heard what Lady Bel said to me . . . still, I didn't _say_ I wouldn't be back, so that's only their assumption, and I can't help that, really, though if anyone actually asks if I hadn't meant to leave for the night I certainly won't lie . . . I think I shall only say that I had thought I was tired, only I then realised I was not. I would rather be thought inconsistent than actually be a liar."

Now thoroughly settled in her own spirit as to how she should behave (and quite awed at her own ability to talk to herself; Lucy had rarely in her life been so often alone as much as she had all the past week, and by being alone so often had quite by accident discovered in herself previously-unsuspected powers of soliloquy) the young Queen arose from her perch, straightened her surcote a little, left the room behind her and walked resolutely down the hall, back to the party.

O0O0O0O

I wish I could say that things got better for the monarchs and their envoy as they spent more time on the Seven Isles, the Narnians growing more accustomed to the inhabitants and the inhabitants to them, but unfortunately it was not so. Peter continued to struggle with the dual burden of kingship and mediation —for his ministers, diplomats though they might have been, had not had much opportunity to be very diplomatic over the course of the Long Winter, and the skill was much in need of polishing in all of them— and Lucy continued to find ample difficulties of her own with which to contend.

I am glad to say, though, that although their stay was a trying one, Peter and Lucy, for the most part, rose to the challenges set before them with admirable grace. Peter worked very hard to be the first to act to settle disputes that arose between his own ministers and any of those of the Seven Isles, although at the same time he was also very careful not to overstep his authority and tread on the toes of King Riordan, who would possibly have forgiven the slight but would almost certainly have thought much less of Peter's abilities for him having made the gaffe in the first place.

Peter, who did not care for his own reputation in the way that an ordinary boy might do, cared very deeply how he represented his kingdom when he was abroad. He would not have foreign monarchs thinking his people were governed by an unfit man, and he would not have Narnia made to look lesser for having a king who could not rise to the challenge of adapting to new customs and being exceptionally diplomatic when it was called for. With this in mind, he bent his every effort to studying at close hand the customs he had heretofore only read of in books, and resolved that he would not be found wanting. He could not show manhood by height or breadth or even experience, but he could show it by his knowledge, his wisdom, and his willingness to be silent and listen in the quest to acquire more of both, and it was not long before the ministers of the Seven Isles and of Narnia alike took note of the change in the young king.

Lucy, for her part, had rather a trickier time of it, because while Peter's diplomats were mostly ready to meet him as a king, at least until he proved himself unfit, the ladies with whom she was expected to consort seemed determined to view her as nothing much more than a very sweet little girl who had gotten a little above herself but could be indulged because she was so very charming about the whole thing.

Since it's not usually the way in groups of women for one to confront the others directly when something they have done has offended her, Lucy was in much more of a bind, and she struggled over it for some time because she did not know what to do and yet hated the idea of burdening Peter with a problem he would almost certainly not even understand, much less know how to solve. Lucy wrote many woebegone and heartfelt letters to Susan at that time, although they were all so indiscreet and undiplomatic in tone and content that she burned most and posted none, secreting those few she meant to pass along to Susan later in the very bottom of her trunk, inside the right of a pair of dancing slippers she had stained on the Lone Islands and would not be wearing again.

The real difficulty, Lucy thought, as she sat beside Queen Irine and answered the woman's polite questions about her sister, was that most of the women didn't even know they were doing anything wrong. Unlike Lady Bel, who had said something so cutting and in such a tone that Lucy was not able to wholly believe it had not been meant as a slight to her age, most of these women honestly did mean to be kind to her. They simply had no idea what they were to do with a little girl the age of their daughters —and in some cases their daughters' daughters— who also happened to be a queen, and so they chose to treat her as a little girl, because little girls were something they knew how to handle.

And really, Lucy thought, listening to Queen Irine speak of her own son, who was very nearly Peter's age, it was understandable that the Queen was used to speaking to other queens about husbands and households and children. What could she think of that she could say to Lucy, who was younger than all but one of her own children? In a country where women were not involved in politics, and only minimally involved in trade . . . why, of course, Lucy thought, the realisation striking her quite forcefully, of course they would have nothing in common with her. Even if she were grown and had a husband and babies, she would have only those things to share with these women. She could not tell them of the way that Tupprong the Goat was teaching her rhetoric, nor of the way that Kip the Duck was instructing her on the finer points of Narnian criminal law. They wouldn't be interested, or if they were, they would only be able to listen and make polite remarks without really understanding, as she was doing now with Queen Irine.

_And who am I to look down on that?_ she asked herself. _Who am I to think that they must be spiteful or silly or annoying if the only things they are doing are the same things they do every day . . . talk with one another about the things they are allowed to know. There are nasty ones, of course, like Lady Bel and Lady Anna, who talk about the others when they're not here, and I think probably Lady Shance too, because I am sure it can't be an accident that she speaks so pointedly of the way she instructs her daughters to be gentle and quiet and keep to their own house and gardens just when she sees me listening to her, but . . . well, it doesn't matter, really. I needn't like _those_ ones, I need only be polite and courteous to them, and I can like the others well enough, because after all,_ with a sudden rush of affection for gentle Queen Irine, _they have mostly been very kind to me. They are just being the only way they know how to be_.

There is nothing like an epiphany, however small, to completely change your outlook on everything. After that, the way that the ladies behaved to Lucy did not change in the least but the way Lucy viewed their treatment of her underwent a complete turnaround, and with it, so did the little girl's attitude. She no longer took their every gentle comment to her about how she must enjoy the time outside of the council chambers to play as a direct insult to the Narnian policy of welcoming its Queens onto the council as readily as it did its Kings; she saw them as comments honestly believed and intended only as a way of welcoming her into the circle of the ladies at court.

"You see?" she burbled to Peter the evening after she discovered this. "You see how it is? They're really almost all just like we thought— they don't know how to say one thing and mean another. Only a few of them do, I think, and those are the really cruel ones. The nice ones, they do think I am too little and they don't think I should be on the council, probably, but they don't mean it at all the way I thought they did! Well, most of them don't, anyway; some of them really don't think I should, and they think it in exactly the way I thought all of them did, but that's all right, because _most_ of them aren't that way at all, do you see?"

"I don't, exactly, to be honest," said Peter, looking bewildered but pleased for his sister all the same. "I'm happy for you, though, Lucy. I really am. I hated the thought of you being bored and miserable while I tried to get through all of these papers on my own this time. I know you wanted to help with everything."

"I did," Lucy said, nodding thoughtfully, "and in most ways I still do, Peter, and I dearly wish I could. But I think this is probably part of the— the job, isn't it? The one we've got to do? We need to have a plan, of course, and a way in which we mean to sort things, but we also need to be ready to change things for the good of others, and in this case I think it's what we've done. The way we do things at home just isn't done here, and if we can work around that and still accomplish all we meant to . . . well, I think we'll have done pretty well for ourselves, don't you?"

Peter at that moment looked at Lucy with an expression of deep wonder, but she missed it because she was plucking a loose thread from the sleeve of her chemise. Was this truly, Peter wondered, the scrape-knuckled little girl with the wispy plaits and sunburnt nose with whom he had sailed to the Lone Islands? Was it actually possible that the course of mere months had changed her so much? Lucy was not taller, exactly, nor even had her hair grown terribly much (although it now no longer was bound in plaits, but actually curled rather sweetly down her neck and well past her shoulders) but there was something much more adult in her face than had been there even one month before.

"If they can't see that you are a queen," he said suddenly, "then however nice they are, I think they must be fools."

"Peter," Lucy chided gently, but her round cheeks dimpled and reddened at the compliment all the same. "You shouldn't say that of them, really; they can't help it, it's all they know. It doesn't make them simple or anything. Just different. But . . . thank you, for saying that. I am glad you think I am a queen. Now," with a sudden, eager hunger coming into her little face, "tell me! What was done in council today?"

"Well," Peter tugged a rumpled piece of parchment from the depths of his doublet, and consulted his carefully-written notes, taken down purely for Lucy's benefit, "we saw the last of the claimants from Brenn today, and I think we'll be able to accept them all."

"Oh, how lovely," Lucy clapped, and moved from the couch to perch on the arm of Peter's chair and study the parchment he held. "And we start in on Mull tomorrow, is it?"

"Mull tomorrow, and I am hopeful of them, too. Though one does worry me, actually. Tell me, Lucy do you remember . . ." and he launched into a detailed description of one petition, which Lucy did remember and assured him worried her too, and together they tried to sort out what might best be done to fix things.

And on it went, late into the night, brother and sister curled up together in the depths of the large chair, the treasured scrap of paper held carefully between them both. Peter and Lucy shared counsel and talked of great and weighty things, a King in hose he was fast outgrowing and a Queen whose knuckles were still scraped at times, both of them making state decisions in an armchair by the fireside until the embers burned low in the grate. Night passed, stars brightened and then faded, and still they talked, sharing the decisions of the day until at last dawn kissed the far horizon and sent pink rays shooting across the sparkling seas. The grey light entered the room and rested on the children as they sat, Peter's head at last drooping with the weight of sound slumber and Lucy, her fair curls tumbling into her face, pillowing her head on her brother's broadening shoulders and sleeping as sweetly as any little girl could wish.

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** If I went into detail about even half of what's happened over the past few months . . . well you'd certainly find this story much less interesting compared to some of my real life drama! Some things are more settled, now, however, and those that aren't yet can't be rushed into settling by any amount of shaking (except for the remainder of my unpacking. What does it say about my life as of late that the LEAST stressful thing we have done is move house?) so I'm trying to focus a bit more on writing again, and reading, too! I have sorely missed the opportunity to catch up on reading the work of my own favourite authors in this section, and I am working on remedying that even now. I suppose we'll see soon enough how well that works out for me!

Up next: Making Sense of Southerners, in which Edmund must deal with Northern prejudice and the Southern reasons for it.


	11. Making Sense of Southerners

Making Sense of Southerners

O0O0O0O

One of the nicest things, I think you will agree, about going to sleep with something weighty and awful pressing on your mind is that when you wake up the next morning, for just one moment you forget all about it and everything seems wonderful. Then, of course, you remember, and everything is awful again, but it makes the one moment of forgetfulness all the sweeter, and that was what happened to the younger King of Narnia in the second month of the Narnian envoy's visit to Archenland.

When Edmund woke to the exuberant crow of the rooster that made its roost just three storeys beneath his window, he enjoyed one single moment of empty peace until he remembered the week's schedule, and a sort of nervous jolt ran through him once more.

Today, he remembered with painful clarity, was the day he was meant to meet with the first of the petitioners from Calormen. Over the course of the past months, the Archen summer had given way to a rich and lovely autumn, which was now waning into something cooler and a bit more like winter. As the seasons had changed, the details of all the Archenlandish treaties had been finally settled. Susan and Queen Lora had taken it upon themselves to occupy their nights by the fireside with the formalities of paperwork that accompanied these settlements, for which Edmund had at first been deeply grateful. Things apparently wanted stamping and signing and sealing and all manner of bureaucratic necessities, and he hadn't thought he had wanted any part of that. Now, however, Edmund wished with all his heart that he might be contending with those necessities, instead of meeting with the claimants from the far South.

It wasn't that Edmund actually disliked the Calormene people; he hadn't even met any, really, unless you counted Fergal, the huntsman they had found in the woods, and Fergal wasn't even truly Calormene; he had just lived in the border areas for some time, traded with a few Calormene mountain tribes and settled villages in the area, and had picked up a bit of a Southwest burr (Prince Corin liked to follow the large, sullen man around with a view to getting him to say things in his strange, broad accent, and would then chortle with unabashed delight when Fergal reluctantly complied. Queen Lora was endeavouring to break him of the habit). He had also acquired spectacular skill with a sword, and when Edmund wasn't busy finalising Archenlandish petitions he was studying under Fergal's painfully abrupt tutelage. Edmund had been gruffly assured that he was improving in form and technique, but it seemed to him that the only thing he was picking up was a fine collection of bruises and scrapes (which he was careful to hide from Susan's concerned eyes) and he often wondered if he would ever be able to wield a sword with anything greater than passable competence.

For the army's sake, he hoped so.

Edmund had tried several times during lessons to get Fergal to tell him something about the Calormenes from the western provinces he had met, but Fergal was remarkably reluctant to discuss them— of course, Fergal didn't like to discuss much of anything save for swordplay, and even then he was as economical with his conversation as he was with his praise, so Edmund felt he had been rather cheated of the chance to get a firsthand account of what, exactly, the Calormenes were truly like. He also worried that, if he were to let himself believe that half the Northern stories were true, he would be far more likely to grab the nearest horse and ride hell for leather straight back to Narnia, rather than deal with the people he was meant to meet with today.

"Surely," he had said pleadingly to Susan the evening before, "surely they are not so bad as they are made out to be."

"Well," Susan said calmly, setting aside a bit of embroidery Queen Lora had been helping her with, "I suppose it all depends. How are they made out to be?"

Edmund snatched at scraps of stories he had been told in the weeks leading up to this event. "People say they're . . . well, some people say they're pretty awful. I've heard that they torture their prisoners, murder their rivals, and burn the villages of all who oppose their overlords."

"Well then," Susan picked up her embroidery once more, "I am nearly positive they cannot be so bad as they are made out to be, for who of such description could possibly think he might make a happy home in Narnia?"

"Yes, of course, that's true," Edmund conceded, "but Susan, the stories must have _some_ truth, else where do they come from to begin with?"

"Oh, I am certain that somewhere, _some_ people do those sort of things," Susan said, and frowned a little at a snarl in her thread, "but I don't think we need expect such people to actually want to live in Narnia, do you? Even as far away as Calormen they have surely heard by now that we do not plan to burn any villages or torture prisoners. Or rather, they know we _would_ not torture prisoners, if only we actually had any prisoners to . . . not torture."

"Yes . . . yes, that's true, too," Edmund allowed, and tried to settle into his chair, but it just wouldn't work. He had gone to bed shortly thereafter at Susan's firm suggestion, but his tension and concern had kept him wound tighter than a bowstring for most of the night, and when he had slept it had been a fitful and uneasy sleep indeed.

It had only been that one, sweet moment of waking that had cleared his mind of all concern, and that moment had been every bit as fleeting as such moments always are. After it passed he had dragged himself from his bed and set about the process of sending for his attendant, who would not have countenanced the king to so much as pour the very water with which he would wash his face (Edmund had tried it only once, and poor Bert's aggrieved countenance at finding his job done for him, and by the very man for whom he had been meant to do it in the first place, had made such an impression on the King that he was simply not brave enough to risk the thing twice).

After he had been washed and dressed Edmund found his way down to the breakfast table where Susan was already seated with Queen Lora, the two already deep in conversation, and where King Lune was tucking happily into a stack of hot, buttery toast. On seeing Edmund the ladies smiled and King Lune beamed, waving a hand in welcome.

"Edmund!" he said, "come in, Sir, and have a seat. Her Majesty was just speaking of your apprehension for the interviews, what, Lady?" and here he smiled fondly at Susan, who smiled nicely back. "She says you're a bit on edge about this whole thing, is that so?"

"A bit," said Edmund, resolving that hereafter he would not tell Susan he was nervous even if they were staring down the shafts of the levelled spears of a Calormene army two thousand strong, if she couldn't be counted on to keep the thing private. "I'm sure it will be all right, though."

"Oh, yes, not a doubt of it," King Lune nodded, gesturing at Edmund to help himself from the generously-laden table. "A funny people, the Calormenes, but then so are we Archenlandish folk, after a fashion. For to be born of any country in any world is make oneself strange to someone from another land, is it not?"

"I— well, yes, I suppose," said Edmund, the observation striking him as both new and steeped in truth.

"But we should no more fear the strangeness of another land than we should wish for them to fear us for our own strangeness," King Lune concluded, taking another piece of toast and topping it with marmalade, "so assuredly no use is to be found in spending our time consorting with concern. Leastwise," smiling in a most ordinary manner at Edmund as the boy took his seat, "not on this subject, to be sure."

"To be sure," Edmund echoed, then took up his plate and set to filling it, so he wouldn't have to think about how very concerned he actually still was. It had been such a nice speech, after all, and he would have hated for King Lune to learn that it hadn't done him much more than just a little good to hear. Edmund of Narnia was very nervous indeed.

O0O0O0O

"I think," Edmund said, "that I will want your help, Fergal."

Fergal, seated in the courtyard and engaged in the business of polishing a small dagger, did not even look up as he arched an eyebrow and grunted a query.

"Oh? And what is it the King of Narnia cannot do that his vassal might accomplish? Save, of course," with a deft, sure stroke of the soft cloth he held, "keep his shield-arm up when he's trying not to take his own head off with a sword."

"Yes, well," Edmund sighed, "if we could for just a minute leave off how hopeless a soldier I am? Thank you. It's only that I'm meant to receive the first of the Calormenes today, you know, and— and I believe I should find your counsel useful."

The large man studied the small knife he held. His face was reflected back at him in the blade, expression impassive.

"What makes my King think a simple hunter can offer wiser counsel than a learned minister?"

"Well, you _know_ them," Edmund said. "That is to say, you lived more or less next door to them, did you not? You know what they are likely to take as honourable, what they will find offensive . . . I don't want to offend them. I don't know how to make sure that I won't."

"Hrmm," Fergal sat a minute, then stood abruptly and sheathed his dagger. "Let's see the list, then."

"The— the list?"

"Yes, the names," Fergal said, holding out an impatient hand. "You've the names of the men come to petition you, have you not?"

"I— well, yes, I have," Edmund said, and hastily reached through a cut in his doublet, fishing around for a tightly-folded packet of papers. These he passed to Fergal, whose large, hard hands opened them with the same deft skill with which he had been polishing the dagger.

The heavy, dark brows knit together as the man's eyes flew over the pages a moment; then he looked up from the paper into the face of his young King.

"These all come from the province of Calmir and the Burnt Rock mountain range."

"Ye-es?" Edmund said. "Is that . . . significant?"

"Eh, well, it means you will be facing warriors, rather than scholars," Fergal said, turning his attention back to the page. "They won't take kindly to pretty words. They'll think you're trying to hide something. Deal straight with them, and they will show you the same honour. This— eh?" He stopped, startled, and looked at the page. "You've a woman's name here."

"I . . . yes, we do. Actually there are three, I think. We did not mandate a male claimant."

"Well you'll need to get somebody else to speak with them; they won't speak with _you_, beardless boy or not," Fergal shook his head. "Not without a male relation present, anyhow. Need to get a female . . . not her Majesty, neither. She's got a soft way about her, they won't like that; not the Western women. They don't appreciate a soft touch. Strikes 'em as being weak. Not one for weakness, the Calmirians . . . nor the Burnt Rock tribes, neither."

Edmund, his head swimming with the magnitude of all he needed to make ready in such a short time, was conscious of feeling slightly ill.

"So . . . I need to find a stern woman I trust to a degree that is at least comparable to the regard in which I hold my sister?" he asked faintly, and Fergal, not about to be troubled by this trifling detail, nodded impatiently, still scanning the names.

"I've heard of some of these," he muttered, more to himself than to Edmund. "Good men. Very good men. Herron, he held the Southern marauders off the hotsprings for a full two days with nothing but a horse, his bow, and a pair of dogs until his brothers turned up to help him. Artith, he's a fine shot and has acquitted himself well in battle; Irrosh has a reputation for fair dealing, though he's not much of one for a fight. Magnus . . . now there's a man of honour, and . . ." he stopped, then, and stared at the page. Edmund waited for a report of fresh complications, but it never came; rather, Fergal simply looked at the sheet of paper a moment longer, then abruptly folded it the wrong way and passed it back to the boy.

"I trust I've been of some service, your Majesty," he said gruffly, and Edmund, feeling rather as though he was drowning in a sea of fresh information, looked helplessly at his teacher.

"Oh," he said, "yes, but . . . I had thought you might be of some use if you were to actually . . . _be_ with me. In the room, when I— when I meet with them."

"Now what's a great boy like you need with a man to play the part of nursemaid?" Fergal scowled, and Edmund felt himself start to flush before reason at last got the best of him.

"I'm not asking you to be nursemaid, Fergal, nor even mouthpiece," Edmund said evenly. "I can speak my own mind. But these people are travelling a long way to meet with me; I want to feel I've done my part by them, and I think that having you there to give counsel as it's needed will be valuable. Will you consent to my request?"

"Aye, well, you're the king, aren't you?" Fergal grumbled, but Edmund was not to be swayed into giving him an excuse to comply.

"I'll not order you, Fergal; if you refuse, I will look elsewhere. Know only that I have need of you now." He held the gaze of the older man as though he himself were not a beardless boy, but the seasoned warrior he did not dare dream he might some day become. "What, then, say you?"

Fergal held the boy's gaze for a long moment, and then he said yes.

"Although," Edmund would say to Susan much later, "there was no way anyone could have said he looked anything close to happy about it."

O0O0O0O

Before Edmund could retire to the airy little chamber where he and his Ministers, and occasionally Susan, had been hearing petitions, he needed to find a woman who matched the description Fergal had given him. When he ventured to ask the older man if he really felt that such a person were necessary, and if Susan might not possibly suffice, Fergal had merely set his jaw and looked patiently foreboding. It was the same way he looked when Edmund said things like "oh I don't know, maybe it's not too heavy after all," in regards to a broadsword, and Edmund had learned very quickly to trust the Look; almost as quickly as he had come to loathe it.

So he sought out Susan, and would later think he had put the matter to her rather badly, and marvel that she had been as gracious about things as she had. For when a brother says "we're worried you might be a bit too gentle for them to respect" it is a rare sister indeed who can nod solemnly, say "oh, I see" and bend her efforts to thinking of women who might have a bit more of an edge. Unfortunately they came up rather short of ideas.

"I do not think we can ask Queen Lora," Susan said doubtfully. "That is to say, I am sure she would be very good at it, indeed probably the best of any I can lay mind to, but I do not think it could be entirely proper for the Queen of one country to act as representative of another. Could it?"

Edmund said hanged if he knew, and Susan said yes, she was, too.

"But it doesn't _seem_ proper," she said, and although she said it with caution there was enough conviction in her tone for the view to hold as sound.

"Perhaps," Edmund ventured, "with a Narnian in the room, beside her? Would that . . . that is, to act as a representative? Of sorts?"

"Perhaps . . ." Susan weighed the matter, and then shook her head. "It would work, but it would need to be somebody of equal or greater rank, I am positive. I don't know _how_ I know that, exactly," she looked at Edmund rather apologetically, and something in her expression shifted just a bit, becoming less Queenly, and more girlish. "It's not as if all of this was included in those etiquette tomes I read back at the Cair . . . actually not a lot of this is, and yet I can make decisions and act on them as though I saw it all written out before me. It's so queer, really, I just try to think of what would feel right and proper to those who look to us to lead them, and then the answer just sort of . . . fits into my head."

"Well," Edmund said, "you've always had rather a knack for knowing what makes people feel at home, you know, and at heart this is just making a lot of people feel at home, only on a much bigger scale than usual. Maybe . . . I don't know, maybe there's a sort of magic about this place that gets into your head and . . . oh, I don't know," clumsily, "makes you better at what you do best? D'you think? Or maybe— maybe it's something that meeting with Aslan has done for us. Because I've got to tell you, Susan," he said, seating himself abruptly beside her and leaning forward in an earnest fashion, "things are going on in my head, too, and I don't even know how to tell you how strange it all is. I mean, I've always had rather a knack for— for puzzles, and the like, don't y'know? Riddles, games, and . . . well, that sort of thing. I can look ahead and see the thing pretty neatly laid out, and unravelling it takes no time at all. Only now, it's like that for _everything_. It's almost as though I see this whole thing, us being here and holding council and everything we say and do in it, as a sort of— of giant chessboard, and every move has to be thought out months in advance, because one little thing we do or say here could carry on for leagues and decades afterward, and it ought by rights to make my head burst open, it's so big and important, but instead it all seems to fit just as neatly and naturally as if I was born to do this in the first place."

"Well," said Susan, "maybe you were. Maybe we all were. Maybe," she passed a thoughtful hand over the list shared between them, tracing the names of each of the women in question with one delicate fingertip, "this is why we four were brought here. Perhaps it's because there are no others who could fit the place as do we. And . . . if that is the case . . ." she looked at the list with new, quiet resolve, and at that moment you could almost see that same magic Edmund had spoken of working within her. "If that is the case," she said, drawing her shoulders back and lifting her chin just a bit, "then why should it not be me? Why should I not be she who stands before them and hears their claims? I am as like to be just and discerning as any other we might find, and surely there could be found in Archenland no more appropriate representatives of Narnia itself than you and I."

Edmund said nothing, but continued to listen as Susan warmed to her topic.

"And as they will not be able to sit before you . . . well, then why should it not be me? For if resolve and strength of will are what they seek in their judge, then let me show them that such can be found in their own Queen, that she is as fit and proper a person to judge their claims as is their King. Indeed, Edmund, if you can see nothing against it I shall gladly stand before them, hear them with as much wisdom as I am granted by my nature and by Aslan himself, and as he is faithful to render unto us all that we need, so shall they see in me all that is fitting in a ruler of any Kingdom. They will find in me nothing wanting." She lifted her head and met her brother's gaze squarely. "On that you may have my word."

"Then so be it," said Edmund. He touched her hand with his, and the agreement was sealed between them.

O0O0O0O

What, exactly, Edmund had been expecting even he could not have said. He had some vague ideas, to be sure, as he walked into the council chamber with Fergal at his side, his Ministers rising from their seats to greet him and standing until Edmund had found his own seat. He thought that maybe the Calormenes might be tall persons, wearing robes (he had seen a few Calormenes depicted in tapestries and woodcuttings kept in King Lune's galleries and archives; those Calormenes had all been wearing robes, and looked tall). He thought they might speak with strange accents, because Fergal did so. But as to the actual proceedings into which he was about to enter, he had no real coherent thoughts at all. He knew only that he was deeply apprehensive, and desperately determined to hide this from all those around him.

For a king who is apprehensive about the upcoming council meeting, I should say that King Lune's council chamber is about the best place to be. It is a long, narrow room built along the outer wall of the castle, and it has windows running from one end to the other. While many councils have a long table flanked by counsellors, with the King seated at the head, King Lune's table only had chairs on one side of it, facing away from the window. It was arranged so that all the men and Beasts sat along the far side of it, with King Edmund and King Lune sitting in the very middle. I cannot say exactly why this made the chamber feel a warmer, brighter place than others like it, but nevertheless it was so; indeed many people have remarked on it, and you will find this unique quality noted in at least three separate histories of Archenland.

"Shall we begin?" King Lune asked of Edmund, and Edmund, who found his tongue unequal to the task of forming proper words, merely nodded and waved a hand in assent, so the doors were opened to admit one very tall man who, yes, Edmund could not help but notice, wore long, white robes. They looked, the young king thought, very soft and plain, and yet somehow majestic at the same time. Edmund had to work hard not to feel a little awed as he took a quick look at the name on the table before him.

"You are Artith?" he asked, and Artith bowed his head ever so slightly in affirmation.

"I have heard great things of you," Edmund said, as Artith stood stoically before him. "You are by all accounts a man of some status in Calormen; you have a family, and not all of them, I see by your own writ, will come with you to the North. I cannot think it would be easy for you to leave behind those who share your name and history. Tell me, if you will . . . what is it that causes you to wish to make your home in Narnia?"

"The noble king will pardon the rambling of an old man," Artith suggested, at which Edmund nodded agreeably, and so Artith began his tale.

"O Narnian King, upon whose reign may the gods look with favour, you may have heard it said that it is the way of the people in the Burnt Rock mountains to pass down stories of all those who have gone before us. All my life, therefore, have I heard the tales of the noble Arnold, he who was the father of my grandfather. Although many knights and courtiers fled Narnia at the first sight of the felled tree which had so long served as protection against the darker powers, with my noble ancestor it was not so. Swift were the horses of the cowards who fled; faithful to the crown was the man whose name I am proud to bear. He stayed until the last to do battle against the sorceress who for so long tyrannised your land, retreating only at the express order of the Queen who would not consent to see the deaths of her most faithful. And so on pain of disobedience to his sovereign did Arnold flee to Calormen, the pass to Archenland having long since been sealed off by those who did the bidding of the evil one."

The sonorous tones of Artith did nothing to lessen the gravity and wonder of the tale he told; each person at the table found himself leaning forward to catch every word that was spoken.

"Many days did Arnold travel southward, through the encroaching frost and deepening snows of the Western wood. With him journeyed those few who had stayed by the side and in the service of the Queen, sworn to defend her until her very orders cast them from her presence. More than one did perish on the journey, for as it must be known to all company here, the winter is an unforgiving foe when faced by those unprepared to combat it. Yet some prevailed, and did live to reach those northernmost peaks of the Burnt Rock mountain range. When these men saw what they had achieved, they rejoiced in their victory and did begin their descent to the plains below.

"Yet ere they had spent one day's journey in Calormen, the noble band encountered riders of the Hairaan tribe, men charged with patrolling and protecting the perimeter of the encampment. It seemed at first that all would be lost, for the riders were of fearsome mien, but one of the Narnian group did plead most eloquently for the lives of his fellows. The riders consented to hear the tale, and so the story was told. On learning of the feats performed by these refugees the riders were greatly moved to show favour to these noble men, and did invite any and all willing to accompany them back to the encampment.

"In the encampmant of the Hairaan tribe the men were fed and watered, and their story told around the fires until all had learned it by heart, from the oldest and most decrepit of men down to the infant yet in arms, for such is the way of the Hairaan people. The chief of the tribe was then moved by the plight of these persons and did invite any of these warriors who so chose to make their home with the tribe. First to accept was Arnold, father of my grandfather. He prospered greatly amongst his new people, and his story was told unto all generations that came after.

"And thus today," Artith made a strange, solemn little gesture with one hand on his chest, "I stand before you, O King, prepared to make my home in the home of my ancestor. He who saw fit to lose all he loved best for the Queen he served, who fought valiantly even in the face of certain defeat . . . it will be his example that I follow until my last breath. If you will allow it, I will make it my life's purpose to raise my children in the service of their Kings and Queens; for it is said, even in Calormen, that those Kings which are appointed to rule by the great Lion of Narnia are Kings of honour and valour, to whom any man should be proud to swear his fealty. With your consent, O King," and again Artith made the solemn gesture toward his own chest, "so shall it be with me and mine."

After this tale was told, a long hush fell over the whole room. It would have been painful in some situations, but in this instance it was anything but, and in any case it could hardly be helped; the Calormenes have a fine way for storytelling, and I do not think you could have found one better to tell a story than Artith, who held the whole room in thrall. It was only at great length that Edmund was at last able to stir himself to speak.

"Well," he said, "well, I . . . thank you." He cleared his throat a little, reached for his quill, and then let his hand fall. He felt a thousand times smaller than he ever had in his life. The weight of understanding, the full knowledge of what he offered these people, had never sat so heavily upon him as it did at that very moment, and suddenly he felt as if dismissing this man with a simple "we'll let you know" would be the most demeaning, disrespectful thing he could do. Even a straight "no" would be more worthy of Artith's time than a studiedly diplomatic reply, and for one grave moment Edmund wrestled with that knowledge.

I am afraid, too, that he very nearly did it— he almost opened his mouth and said, flat out, that they would be honoured to offer Artith the lands taken from Arnold of Narnia. It was only at the very last possible moment that he remembered himself; that the same phenomenon he had described to Susan earlier, seeing his every choice and action as he would view the movements of a chess piece, came sharply into play. There was, Edmund was sure, a time and a place for a King to make impulsive and arbitrary decisions, but here, in the council chamber, was not one of them. So with as much solemnity and respect as he could muster, the young King inclined his head toward Artith.

"You have honoured us with your presence here today," he said, words flowing as easily as if he had planned them beforehand. "You have our solemn assurance that we shall not be long in deliberating your case."

It was as clear and gracious a dismissal as a King of thrice Edmund's years could have managed. Artith again made the strange little gesture toward his chest, bowed once, and backed out of the room.

O0O0O0O

Edmund heard five more men that week before the council took a day of rest, on which day the young Narnian king cornered Fergal and set to peppering him with a list of questions that would have made any person's head spin. Fergal answered as best he could, explaining to the King the meanings of various phrases the claimants had used, the place names they had mentioned and even the significance of the various gestures the Calormenes employed.

"You will find the people of the Western provinces far less likely to spend much of their time making empty gestures," Fergal said. "Those from the central provinces have made it into almost an art . . . a thousand and one ways to beg your pardon, my mother used to say, and yet not one of those pretty gestures can prove that you truly mean it. But the Western people are less occupied with such artistry, and so when they make a gesture, you can be certain that they are sincere."

So Edmund ran over those gestures that had been made, and Fergal made short work of his explanations. A hand passed once, downward, over a person's face was a gesture of regret; a single palm upturned was a plea or appeal, two palms upturned meant an apology of several different possible sorts, and palms pressed together were a gesture of gratitude. The gesture that Artith had made, the one of his fist making a quick circle above his chest, was one of deep fealty, and made most typically by a son to his father, or one brother to another.

"It is not even a gesture that is generally made to kings," Fergal admitted. "It denotes not a . . . servile loyalty, such as any bondsman might bear to his lord and master, but rather a true, heart-fealty. That is why it is rarely used for one outside the family."

"And so that Artith made this gesture to me would mean . . ." Edmund's brow furrowed in perplexity. Fergal was even more measured than usual in his reply.

"He would be a good man to have at your side."

"That's what I thought," Edmund said, and although no more words were exchanged on the subject, it was clear that each understood the other full well.

O0O0O0O

Susan had debated with herself for some time the best manner in which to approach her own interviews with the three women from the province of Calmir. From her discussion with Edmund she had gained the impression that a council chamber might be a more fitting place than a salon or private apartment or any similar room, and yet, thanks to two very brief interviews that had been held when the Narnians had first arrived in Archenland, Susan was already painfully aware that she was at her best when she was _not_ in a council chamber. In the end she went to Queen Lora and put the problem to her, and the Archenlandish Queen very quickly contrived a suitable solution.

"We will arrange for the feel of a council chamber," she decided, "but forego the formality of the room itself. I have a pretty apartment that I believe might meet your requirements; would you care to see it?"

Susan had accepted readily and together they inspected the chamber in question. It was a large, open room some distance away from the private apartments of the courtiers, and it was, Susan learned, the room in which Queen Lora would have met daily with her ladies, had she any ladies with which to meet (the Queen admitted she preferred the company of her husband and son to devoting hours to embroidery, chatter and arranging tables, but had not yet found any women who could share in these preferences). It had almost no furniture in it, by virtue of being so seldom used, and so with just a few instructions issued to waiting attendants the room had been very quickly made adequate for Susan's purposes.

"Indeed," Queen Lora said, as the two stood in the room and studied the arrangement of the chairs, "it is a fit room for any regent to hold counsel, do you not think?"

"I— I am afraid I cannot say," Susan admitted, and was conscious of a sudden attack of nerves. It was much the same feeling that you get before you must stand in front of your schoolmates and make a speech you forgot to prepare, or even when you are called before the teacher to give an accounting for something that you know nothing about. Susan felt suddenly very ill indeed, and Queen Lora, seeing the look on the girl's face, put a friendly hand on her shoulder.

"Is there aught I can do to assist my little cousin?" she wondered, and Susan, absurdly grateful for the support, managed to shake her head.

"I don't think . . . that is, I am certain I should be grateful for your counsel, indeed even for your presence, but I cannot think how they would see it, me having you here. And until I can be certain they would not term it a slight, or affront . . . I cannot see anything to recommend it."

"Wisdom indeed," Queen Lora agreed. "And of course it is Narnia's privilege to direct these meetings as its regents see fit. Know only that the offer stands; I should be glad of the chance to sit beside you, to show these women that Archenland is with you in all things."

"You are gracious to suggest it," Susan murmured, beginning a slow, nervous circuit of the room. "I would certainly not have you think I am ungrateful for your counsel. I should be glad to have you here, to benefit from your understanding, and yet I am frightened to think these women might not hear me out simply because they perceive in me some weakness that they find distasteful."

"I understand," Lora smiled, "and far be it from me to counsel Narnia's Queen against the wisdom of her own counsel. Yet . . . my dear," this said with all the gentle entreaty of a mother to her child, "would you have these women see a Narnia that is not the true one? If the stories you have told me of your sister are true, they will see soon enough that Queens come in all manner of guises, and that your nature is no more to be scorned than that of the Queen Lucy. What of Queen Lucy, whom you have described as the very farthest thing from shy and retiring? Would you brook any insults against her? Would you meekly stand for others to look down upon her for her own temperament?"

"I would not," said Susan, and there was a resolution in those words that took even Queen Lora aback to hear.

"There, now," she said, once she had recovered from her surprise, "you see? You would not have Queen Lucy made lesser for her nature; why should you accept that you must alter your own self to become more appealing? My dear, these ladies will sit under your rule for as long as they live. Do you not owe them the courtesy of knowing the true nature of she who will govern them and their families?"

"I— I suppose I do," said Susan, rather startled to see the thing this way. "I suppose it would be deceitful for me to appear to them as anything other than my true self, would it not?"

"It would, indeed," Lora agreed, and was treated to a stunningly resolute expression on the face of the girl before her.

"Then far be it from me to appear to them as aught but who I am," Susan decided. "And, Madam, if your offer yet stands—"

"It does."

"—then I gladly accept your offer of counsel."

The matter settled to her satisfaction, Susan crossed to seat herself in the chair that had been positioned facing the doorway. She inclined her head to the attendant who stood by the door, at which signal the man nodded as well, and turned to open the door.

Queen Susan was ready to grant an audience.

O0O0O0O

As the Narnian and Archenlandish council neared the end of their second week, on that same day that Susan was readying herself to receive the Calormene woman, Edmund was conscious of surprised relief at all he had learned. No Calormenes had expressed so much as a hint of desire to rampage through villages or punish random tenants for perceived deficiencies of character or performance. True, they had a different way about them than did the Archenlandish folk, but it was certainly no more than was to be expected; in fact Edmund guessed that Peter and Lucy were encountering at least ten times as many little differences in the course of their own travels as Edmund himself had faced in the council chambers on that very day.

It was with this conscious relief that Edmund turned his attention to the last name on the schedule for that day.

"One Magnus, claimant to the land of Westford," he announced, "and bondsman, Fergus Armour."

The latter name stirred a chord in his memory, but before he could work out why, Edmund's attention was torn in two by the startled shout of "bondsman?!" from farther down the table, and the abrupt opening of the door set in the wall across from him.

Two men entered by the door, the first dark, the second fair. Unlike the mountain tribes whose men came clad in long, flowing robes, these men were dressed as men from the cities of Calmir, where, Fergal had explained earlier, the heat and lack of wind demanded as little costume as possible; a light tunic was the most that man, woman or child ever wore before sundown, when the cooler temperatures then necessitated that cloaks be worn or fires built. The men who entered now did wear cloaks but these were flung well back over their shoulders; they were bare headed and bore no arms, but the first man carried a staff, although he looked far too young to yet have need of such a thing. Edmund guessed he was, at most, twice Peter's age, though likely not even that.

"Magnus of Westford?" Edmund queried, and the man with the staff, the tallest and broadest man they had seen all week, nodded in curt affirmation.

"The same, your Majesty," he said, and Edmund recognised the same rolling accents with which Fergal spoke. And there, he had it, now— Armour had been the name in which Fergal had claimed his lot, although the name was not in fact Fergal's own.

And there, behind Magnus, was another man every bit as broad as Magnus and Fergal alike, though perhaps lacking slightly in height when compared to the man with whom he had entered. This, Edmund supposed, would be the bondsman, Fergus Armour. Fergus had bowed to the council on entrance, but when he straightened his gaze had fallen on Fergal, who stood behind Edmund, and all at once a shout escaped him. Magnus jerked around in surprise, and then followed the gaze of his bondsman.

"Oho!" said Magnus, and seemed to think that this was all the comment required of him. Edmund, swivelling around to stare up at Fergal, thought that rather more comment than that was likely going to be necessary, and hoped that his expression conveyed as much to the glowering man who stood behind his chair.

"Fergal," he said, and Fergal grunted in such a way that Edmund took to mean the other man was indeed aware that the situation was promising to be a complicated one. "Fergal, is there something here to which the good gentlemen of the council should be . . . made privy?"

"No, your Majesty," Fergal said stoically, "nothing private or anything like that. As to the character of the freeman who stands before you, you have already received my assurance that he is a man of honour. His bondsman . . . well," with a careless shrug. "What can a man say of his own blood that will be without bias?"

"Your blood?" Edmund's eyebrows seemed to be seeking refuge in his hairline, and he could contrive of no means to lower them. He looked back to Magnus, who seemed almost to have the very faintest vestige of a twinkle in his eye, and then beyond him, to the now-glowering Fergus.

"Aye, Sir," this was Fergus, speaking for the first time since his entrance. "Fergal is grandson of my great-uncle, Rogan Armour. We are cousins, after a fashion."

"I did tell your Majesty," Fergal observed, "that I was husband, brother and father to none."

"You did indeed," said Edmund, his head swimming as he tried to work out what, if anything, this meant. "And so . . . are you then claiming livelihood in Narnia under the same name? The pair of you? Is that it? Why would you not tell me of your connection to him before now, Fergal? You must have seen his name on the list I gave you, so why—" but here Edmund stopped, because he remembered the sudden silence that had overtaken the hunter just before he passed the list back.

"I am claiming nothing under my own name, Sir," Fergus put in from his position behind Magnus. "I come here only as bondsman to my lord; the claim that was offered to me I forfeit willingly to my kinsman, and he came to Narnia with full knowledge of this."

"That's more than _I_ came into it with," Edmund said, and if he sounded just a trifle put out, I am sure we can excuse him. "I can't . . . now, see here," very belatedly, "bondsman? We're having none of that sort of thing in Narnia, you know; every man's a freeman, every woman is the same. No serfs, slaves, or anything of that sort will be allowed. I am sorry if you came all this way thinking that—"

"Fergus," interrupted Magnus, and although his tones were mild there was steel underneath, "is quite free to leave me as he pleases."

"My lord risked his own life in defence of mine," Fergus asserted. "It was and is my choice to repay his service with mine."

"Took quite a bit of talking on his part to make his choice my choice, too," Magnus reflected, leaning on his staff, and again some slight glint of humour seemed to dance across the solemn face, but once again it was gone so quickly that Edmund could not be sure he had even seen it to begin with. "In any event," with a cordial nod to Edmund, "I take it that you won't be prepared to hear me out today, after all, is that so?"

"It is," Edmund admitted, still trying to sort out whether or not there had been anything truly untoward discovered, or if it was just a lot of misconception that added up to a fine muddle; he wondered how in the world he could hope to sort out that much when he was having a hard enough time just telling their names apart. "I offer my apologies, but—"

"Not at all," Magnus shook his head. "Five years I've been dealing with the Armour kinsmen," with a regretful look over his shoulder, "and I've not yet seen a one of them that can make a thing easier for their being a part of it."

"Tomorrow, then," Edmund suggested, and Magnus nodded.

"Tomorrow it is," he agreed, and then, once again, that faint glint of might-be amusement was visible in clear blue eyes as he studied the glowering man behind the King. "Should be interesting."

Edmund, watching the pair take their leave of the council chamber, found that he didn't doubt it in the least.

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** My sister recently brought home a great big pack of chocolate digestive biscuits. They were sinfully delicious. Note the past tense. She also made some scrumptious chicken curry and I put quite a dent in that, too . . . I actually think she may actually be plotting to fatten me for some nefarious purpose of her own, but all that food made for excellent fuel in writing this chapter so I won't let her know that I'm on to her just yet!

You may (or may not) have noticed that this chapter is considerably longer than those previous. This may (or may not) become a trend. Things are simply becoming a bit more complex than I had expected them to, based on my outline, and so far I haven't seen a need to thin them out. I may see the need at a later date . . . or I may not. We'll see!

Up next: Why People Don't Walk in the Western Wood, in which two Queens learn just that.


	12. Why People Don’t Walk in Western Wood

Why People Don't Walk in the Western Wood

O0O0O0O

When last we left Susan, she was seated in an open, airy chamber that was to serve as her council room, with Queen Lora standing nearby. This is where we rejoin her, although Queen Lora has by now taken a seat, and the two queens are sitting very straight indeed as the door is opened to admit three women from the far western Calormene province of Calmir.

All three of the women who entered the room on that day wore the costume of Calmirian ladies. They were kept warm by long, well-made cloaks of softest lambs' wool dyed in bright, solid colours and wrapped with apparent effortlessness over clean white tunics. Their shining dark hair was dressed in delicate spirals of gold, but aside from these they wore no jewellery. Their simple leather sandals made only the softest whispering noises against the flagstone floor as they entered. With the door closed behind the newcomers and the lone attendant decorously removed to the corridor, Susan suffered only a momentary qualm at the strangeness of it all before she made indication that the women were free to seat themselves across from her, which they did. Susan then drew a deep breath, fixed her gaze on each woman in turn, and spoke.

"I am Queen Susan of Narnia," she said quietly, "and beside me," with a graceful nod to her companion, "is Queen Lora of Archenland. She has consented to sit with us for this interview. I have," (this said with candour and without apology) "very little knowledge yet of how these things are accomplished."

If this shocked or alarmed the Calmirian women, they did not betray it. They merely sat very still and remained silent, regarding the two Queens with dark, bright eyes.

"If you would be so good," Susan went on, "I should like to know which of you is which. I have three names here before me," she made a small gesture at a scroll on her lap, "but I do not know . . . one of you is Ulia Ba'Son?"

The woman on the far left of the three, the tallest and oldest, wrapped in a cloak of brightest azure with silver threads adding age and its accompanying stature to the already brilliant spirals of gold in her hair, inclined her head.

"I am she, Lady," Ulia said, and although she spoke quietly, it seemed as if her words filled the entire audience chamber, slipping into each corner and circling back to echo softly all around them. This is a handy trick of speech that is often learned by women in a land where silence is expected of them, and yet communication is, naturally, also imperative.

Susan smiled warmly at Ulia and bade her friendly welcome to the audience. Queen Lora, who was watching Ulia closely, thought she saw perhaps the faintest flicker of surprise touch the eyes of the much older woman. Queen Lora hid an understanding smile of her own; Susan's smile was of such brilliance that an observer did well to be prepared to receive it.

"And," Susan returned her gaze to the scroll, "Na'mia Adrash?"

Na'mia proved to be the smallest and youngest of the three, the petite girl in a cloak of scarlet who sat in the chair on the far right. She did not incline her head gently, as Ulia had done, but rather lifted bright, sharp eyes to Susan's and, in polite but carrying tones, identified herself as such. Susan bade the young woman welcome as she had done with Ulia, and then turned to address the woman who sat between her fellows.

"You, then, must be Eurveth Tarshett," the young Queen deduced, but to her surprise, the woman in question —older than Na'mia by at least half a decade, but certainly ages younger than Ulia— made a peculiar little motion with her hand, and answered, softly, to the negative.

"I— I beg your pardon," Susan looked quickly back down to the scroll before her, "it is the only other name I have here, so I assumed . . . you are not Eurveth Tarshett? But you have received invitation to claim lands in the name of an ancestor, surely?"

"I did, Lady," the woman, gowned in a cloak so vibrantly green it might have been fashioned from a piece of Narnian hillside, inclined her head in much the same way that Ulia had done. "Forgive my ambiguity. Eurveth is indeed my name, and once Tarshett was too. But in seeking to claim the land offered to me by way of my mother's line, I defy the will of my father. I can no longer claim the name of Tarshett, for my father no longer calls me his daughter."

"Oh," said Susan, suddenly feeling that a large, dark hole yawned at her feet. She struggled not to misstep. "I . . . I suppose, then, that there is . . . no place left for you, now, in Calmir?"

Eurveth held the Queen's gaze in a steady, respectful manner. "There is one, Lady . . . but it is not the sort of place that any mother would wish for her daughter. It is a ruination from which a Calmirian woman is permitted no return."

"Oh," said Susan again, and, for want of anything else to do, she turned her attention to the scroll once more. Unfortunately it was of no help to her; only the three names she had already spoken aloud looked back at her, coupled with very succinct descriptions of the right by which each woman meant to claim her land. "Oh," said Susan again, and hoped very much that she would not start to cry in the middle of her first official audience. What had they done? She and Peter and Edmund and Lucy— what had they _done_? Offering things that they could not guarantee, until they had met the persons to whom they had been offered . . . inducing people to take chances that could cost them their very way of life in the worst possible way. It suddenly seemed monstrous.

Queen Lora cast one brief, assessing glance at her young friend and moved swiftly, placing a firm hand on her little cousin's arm. The warmth of her palm and the weight of the gesture infused the girl with a sudden reminder of her place, her position, and, yes, her calling. Susan lifted her head abruptly, sat up a bit straighter, and addressed Eurveth.

"You have risked much in coming, Lady," she said, and her tones, measure for measure, matched those of all the wisest rulers who had gone before her. "You are prepared, then, to forsake the safety and comfort of your father's house for the chance to make a new life in a strange land? Do I understand that you would choose an unknown land," this said still gently, and with even some hint of good humour, "which I believe has been rumoured, in your Empire, to be populated by the most fearsome demons, hobgoblins, and any other manner of unnatural things, above the assurance of protection that is offered to you in the house of your father and the home of your birth?"

Eurveth spoke softly but without hesitation as she made her answer.

"You may indeed take this as truth, Lady. For you see, I have been told by my mother of the tales that were told her by her mother before her, and hers, before her. I have heard, too, the tales told by men in my father's company when they sit with their coffee after their meals. I have heard the stories they tell of Narnia, and long have I contrived to hear all that they say. In Calmir it is not thought seemly for a maiden to listen to the private talk of men, and my father is a man who loves that which is seemly and proper above all else. Had I been caught in my eavesdropping the consequences would have been severe, and yet I risked the wrath of my father gladly, for it was as though I was spurred on by something far more powerful than I.

"From the moment of my first hearing the name of Narnia, the mention of the great Lion . . . truly, I could not help myself; the very notion of these things became as life, breath and water to me, and I could not help but seek them whenever I could. I have learned in my secret studies that to stand in service of the Lion of Narnia is to fear no wrong thing, but rather to know that all that befalls you there is as the Lion and only the Lion would see it done. Long have I heard stories of those who served him, and long did I believe, and grieve, that it could never be so for me.

"I blush now, to think of it, but I doubted that even the Lion of Narnia could snatch me from the province of Calmir and the palace of my father! When my mother passed into the care of her ancestors I grew even more certain that my fate was to dwell in the home of my father until I passed into the house of my husband. Great was my sorrow to imagine I should never see the kingdom of he who was my one hope for deliverance. Yet even in my doubt that the Lion could offer succour, still I called out to him, entreating him for some sign that I might yet hope, or, else wise, for some sign that I must set aside childish notions in favour of service to my father. For even then it had begun to creep into my mind that a girl must be foolish indeed, to think she could serve a great king in the stead of her own parent.

"But oh! Lady! When the message came from the King —your noble brother, Lady— and when I saw on it the seals of not only the King and his Royal brother, but the signs and seals of the Queens also, noblewomen holding rank alongside their kinsmen . . . I knew that it was a sign sent unto me by the will of the Lion. I do not," with graceful haste, "mean to say that I took it as a sign that I was meant to be granted the land I seek to claim; that is, of course, a matter for my lady Queen to determine. But I took it and indeed do take it yet as a sign intended to assure me that the Lion sought me for His service earnestly and with —oh, to even think it!— a devotion that equalled, if it did not actually surpass, my own in seeking him. I swore on the moment of receipt of that summons that I would seek to stand in service of him, cost me what it may, and so I shall. Though I may be barred title to the land, if I am granted even entry to Narnia and am there made free to seek my way in service of him, that would be sufficient. I would be a slave in the meanest home in all the Lion's kingdom, Lady, before I returned to title and honour in the home of my father."

Eurveth ended this tale with no pretty flourish or gesture, but simply sat back and lowered her eyes slightly, to signal that she had concluded her speech.

I do not believe that I can hope to convey to you the effect that this narrative had on Susan. If Artith's tale to the council had struck them all dumb, then Eurveth's tale had brought the gentle Queen to the verge of tears. Yet, Susan thought, surely it would not be proper to shed those tears in the presence of the women who looked to her to make a just and impartial judgement of their fitness to take up the land they hoped to claim. Thus Susan sat quite still and held her breath to keep from weeping, turning first a little pink, and then a little purple, until at last she thought she had herself well in control once more and was able to address the matter at hand.

"I . . . thank you, Eurveth," she murmured, "for your candour, and your courage. You may trust we will not be long in considering your case. I . . ." poor Susan found the lettering on the scroll was difficult to make out, through the saltwater haze that obscured her vision. "I think . . ." she tried to remember the name. "Ulia Ba'Son, will you tell me, then, what it is that brings you to seek a home in Narnia?"

Ulia's tale, mercifully, was much more straightforward than that of her countrywoman. She was an older woman whose sons had passed on to wives and households of their own, and her husband had, like Eurveth's mother, passed on to the care of his ancestors.

"I am left with two daughters," Ulia concluded, "and a desire to pass my final days in the home of _my_ ancestors, if my lady Queen sees fit to permit it."

"Thank you, Ulia Ba'Son," Susan said, and made a careful notation beside the woman's name. "I assure you, we will not be long in deliberating. And now . . . Na'mia Adrash?"

Na'mia sat up a little straighter at hearing her name called, much the way schoolchildren will when they know the teacher's eyes are on them. She tipped her head slightly to one side and met Susan's gaze with forceful expectancy.

"Your Majesty?"

"Your petition states you are without family."

"I am," Na'mia nodded.

"You have no living relations of any description?"

"I do not."

"And you wish you come alone to make your home in Narnia?"

"I do."

Susan began to feel almost as if she were pulling teeth. There was nothing at all disrespectful or secretive about the girl, but neither did she seem particularly forthcoming. She simply regarded Susan with those bright, grave eyes and waited for the next question, which Susan found herself fumbling in the face of her own disquiet.

"And— and you say here," she squinted quickly at her notes, "you claim your land through your father's line?"

"I do."

"The land you seek to claim— it is the estate of Eastford?"

"Yes."

"That is, the keep and lands on the eastern bank of the Archen River Ford in the Western Wood?"

"I do not know."

"You— I'm sorry?"

"I do not know," Na'mia repeated. "I have never been there."

"Oh, yes, of course." Susan began to feel rather flustered, and hated the thought that she must look it, too. Susan, being that type of person who prefers to say no more than is absolutely necessary, felt most at ease with people who leaped to fill the silences she left. When it came to confronting a person who was as economical in her speech as Susan herself, if not even more so . . . it was more of a trial than the Queen would have cared to acknowledge. "And," she looked quickly over the list, "why do you want to come to Narnia?"

"I want to make a home," Na'mia explained. "I have nowhere to make it in Calmir."

"Nowhere?" Susan asked, forgetting her discomfort in the face of her surprise.

"No. Calmirian women do not make homes; they have homes made for them, and are then taken there to live."

This explanation barely warranted the name, in one respect, but in another it seemed to say everything that was necessary; certainly Ulia and Eurveth both nodded their quiet assent to this truth, which left Susan feeling she was hardly in a position to question it further. Instead she looked back down at her list, felt her face grow hot with confusion, and wondered desperately how next to proceed.

Then, in much the same way she had described to Edmund only recently, as she reflected desperately on the issue at hand suddenly the answer was simply _there_, seeming almost to shape itself around the problem as if it had been made to order. She knew what to do as surely as if she had done it a hundred times before. So Susan raised her head, nodded briefly to each of the women, thanked them for their time and then sat back in her chair, signalling an end to the audience. Only once the three had made respectful bows and shuffled out did Susan turn to Queen Lora beside her.

"My dear!" her friend smiled. "My dear cousin I hope you will not refuse my congratulations. That was very well done, indeed."

"Do you think so?" Susan laughed shakily. "I am not so sure. But in any event I hope to make a proper consideration of each of them, and of course I would hear Edmund's counsel also. I am afraid I am a poor hand at taking the measure of a person."

"Well, was there among these three any woman who gave you pause?"

"No-o," Susan said doubtfully. "That is to say, not in any way that should matter. I am afraid I made a bad job of interviewing Na'mia Adrash; she is the sort of person who would be better served to speak with Lucy. There can be no reticence or taciturnity when one speaks with Lucy; she cannot bear such things."

"The more you speak of this beloved sister, the more eager I am to meet her," Queen Lora laughed. "She sounds a most enchanting thing. I cannot think, though," she patted Susan's hand encouragingly, "that even the Queen Lucy could have conducted herself with any better grace than did my sovereign cousin this very hour. Your comportment, my dear, was without fault."

"I thank you, but you would do well to reserve judgment," Susan sighed, carefully rolling up the list she held. "I am not done with this."

"No?"

"No, it . . . I'm afraid I don't yet know enough to make a decision concerning Na'mia."

"She was not, perhaps, the most forthcoming claimant of the three," Queen Lora conceded. "Very well then, my dear; what scheme have you in mind?"

"I thought that perhaps it might help if she were to see the land she seeks to claim," Susan explained. "She mentioned she had never seen the property, which makes sense, since none of them have. But I wonder if letting her see the place she wishes to call her home might not . . . if it might not provoke her to further declaration."

It sounded very weak when she actually said it aloud, Susan thought, and she almost regretted saying it, but Queen Lora's thoughtful expression changed her mind.

"I think you may have something there," Lora nodded slowly. "How do you propose that this might be accomplished?"

Susan struggled not to fidget with the sleeve of her gown. "Well," she said, and there was a distinct note of apology in her tone, "it is yet quite early in the day . . ."

Queen Lora's laugh was light and rich with delight. "It is indeed. Very well then, dear cousin," she inclined her head most graciously to the younger Queen, "let us make ready to ride."

O0O0O0O

"You want to go riding? _Now_?" Edmund stared at his sister in blank incomprehension. Susan did not blush or fidget, but she did have the grace to look just a little apologetic.

"Yes, but it's not for fun, Edmund, I think it's necessary. I had the interviews today, you know—"

"Oh, yes. How did that work out?"

"Well enough, I think, but I cannot consider them concluded until this has been accomplished. I think it necessary."

"I've no doubt you do, Susan, else you would not have suggested it. But can it be safe? Our first night passing through the wood you were attacked; the next day there was the wolf, and . . ." he looked at his older sister beseechingly. "You cannot expect me to countenance you returning there with none but Her Majesty and this— this Na'mia person to accompany you."

"No, of course not," Susan smiled. "I had thought we would take a guard, of course; a few of the men in King Lune's castle guard, and then perhaps some of our own court— a Centaur, possibly, and some of the Cats, if they would consent."

"None would refuse the honour of protecting the Queen, Susan," Edmund said, and sounded far more vexed than he meant to. He couldn't help it; he was suffering from that particular irritation which is borne of frustration at knowing you will only look petty if you continue to insist on having your way. The boy searched desperately for some flaw in his sister's proposition, but could find none sufficient to warrant further protest. The kindly expression on Susan's face told him she knew it to be so, and this only made him all the more cross.

"Very well, then," he said, and if he sounded more like a petulant little boy than he did a gracious regent, well, who's to condemn him? Susan even smiled and planted a fond kiss on his cheek, which at once both embarrassed and pleased the young King. "Yes, well," he mumbled, and ducked his head, causing Susan's smile to widen.

"Will you come and see us off?" she entreated. "We will leave inside of an hour, Edmund . . . won't you agree to see us safely on our way?"

And she knew Edmund was not truly cross with her when he said yes, all right, very well, he would do it.

O0O0O0O

Standing in the courtyard three quarters of an hour later, Edmund surveyed the preparations that had been made for the excursion. The sort of guard that the two Queens were able to assemble in less than an hour was naturally not a terribly grand one, but at the same time the King was forced to admit they were the sort with whom any enemy would be hesitant to reckon. Three large Cats reclined by the castle gates, tails twitching in indolent irritation as they awaited the command to be off. Pollus the Centaur stood at the ready, and Lobie and Pansy of the Talking Hound pack were frisking about the hooves of the six horses being readied for the journey.

Edmund, on seeing the number of mounts being readied, crossed the courtyard to intercept Susan as she started for her own mare.

"Who is going with you?" he wanted to know. "I count six horses."

Lucy or Peter in that situation might have made a joke about Edmund's mathematical prowess, but Susan simply smiled. "Queen Lora, as you know, has kindly offered to join us on our journey to the Eastford property. Na'mia in turn requested permission to bring two persons, and I said she might."

"Who? The other two women?" Edmund wondered, but a deep, burred voice behind him swiftly disabused him of the notion that women would be accompanying them.

"I am many things, Edmund of Narnia, but a woman I am not. 'Tis a mistake not many have made, I must say," the newcomer observed. Edmund turned to find Magnus and Fergus standing behind him. Magnus no longer carried the staff he had held on entering the council, but rather held a long, straight spear nearly as tall as the staff had been; Fergus carried one identical to it. The three men exchanged nods and small bows, and Edmund presented Susan.

"Madam." Magnus made a deeper bow than he had done when greeting Edmund, and Fergus followed suit. Upon straightening, Magnus addressed Edmund. "Mistake me not again for a woman, O King," he recommended, but there was a glint of humour in his eyes as he said it, which provoked a smile from Edmund.

"I shall make a most sincere effort," the King promised, and thought that perhaps Magnus's lips may have twitched in an answering smile, though the man's short, stiff beard made it difficult to say for sure.

"When I put to her the possibility of us travelling to view her estate, Na'mia was much in favour," Susan explained. "But of course I felt it only fair that I warn her of the dangers that inhabit the Western Wood, and so I suggested she choose from among her own people a guard such as could be trusted, or else that she consent to my appointing an extra person from our own court. She elected to choose from among her countrymen."

"Are you acquainted with the lady, then?" Edmund queried, but Magnus shook his head.

"Never met her before today," he said cheerfully. "But it is the custom of my people that we refuse neither hospitality nor protection to those who request it, and of course the Tarkheena Na'mia knew this. She sent a messenger with words of introduction and her petition for our services; all very proper, even by the standards of Calormen, I assure you. You need not fear, King Edmund," he added, and this time there was a gentle sort of solemnity about him as he spoke. "We take this custom of protection . . . very seriously."

Edmund nodded, and though he did not say so, he did feel almost absurdly relieved. There was something about the spears coupled with the grim geniality of these men that made it impossible to doubt their ability to fully discharge their obligation.

The remaining preparations to depart were completed with considerable speed, with each member of the travelling party looking to his or her own needs, and very little attention being paid to what took place around them. Edmund pressed a kiss to each of his sister's cheeks and offered his cupped hands to aid her in mounting. As he stepped back to give room for Norry to prance just a little, Lobie appeared at the King's side, tilting his head enquiringly to look up at the Queen.

"Shall I accompany your Majesty?" he queried, tongue lolling agreeably. "It would be a great honour, you know; very nice day, lots of lovely scents, I'd be most happy to point them out to you if you liked."

"That's very kind of you, Lobie," Susan smiled. "Yes, thank you, I should enjoy that." Then she turned her attention to quieting Norry, which left Edmund free to kneel down and address the Hound in a very quiet, solemn tone.

"You'll look after her, won't you, Lobie?" he said. "For me."

Some of the gaiety in the dog's eyes dimmed and was replaced by watchful consideration. "Of course, Sire," he said, and then thumped his whippy tail on the ground, because of course a hound's a hound, even if he _can_ talk, and there's not much room for prolonged solemnity with them.

"Good," Edmund nodded, then rose, and stepped back even farther so that all those assembled could arrange themselves in something like an organised fashion. No trumpets sounded, but people smiled and talked and laughed (well, most of them did. Edmund could not help but notice that Na'mia looked rather solemn, but that seemed to be a trait of many Calormenes, so he chose to attribute it to culture rather than nature) and as one easy, agreeable group, they moved out.

After the travelling party took their leave so did Edmund, and all grooms at hand returned at once to their duties, but the stableyard did not quiet immediately after they left. Instead, not even a quarter of an hour had passed before one small, fat pony bearing a small, slight rider trotted out of the stables, making purposefully for the gate. Pony and rider, however, were the only ones in the stable yard, which meant that when Prince Corin of Archenland dug his heels imperiously at the pony's sides and ordered it into a canter, the pair of them leaving the courtyard in favour of following the party of grown-ups over the field, up to the pass at Anvard and into the Western Wood, nobody saw them go.

O0O0O0O

The ride to the Western Wood is an exceptionally pretty one at any time of year, but in late autumn there is the added appeal of the rich reds, golds and ambers that colour the hardwoods. Susan, who hadn't really been able to enjoy the view the last time they travelled, given the gathering twilight and the assassination attempt and whatnot, found herself wishing she might slow Norry's pace to better appreciate the view.

"Oh, for a day to do nothing but simply stand and stare at such loveliness," she sighed, speaking more to herself than to any in her company. Lora, who rode beside the younger Queen, smiled at her in amusement and understanding.

"I have often wished for the same," she confessed. "But it is for others to have, I am afraid . . . what do you know of the estate of Eastford? Is there aught you think should be told to the young lady ere we arrive?"

"Nothing I can recall," Susan turned her attention from the scenery to ponder the question. "It is a pretty piece of land. Westford lies directly across the river, you know, and from what can be determined from records and correspondence found in the castle, those who hold each estate have long made a custom of partnering in defence of their properties. When you see them for yourself, you will understand why this has been such a success. The bridge itself is in want of some small repairs, but nothing that a single stonemason could not put right. I do believe—"

But what Susan believed would never be known, since before she could give voice to it the wind shifted, and Pansy lifted her head to the sky in sudden, excited awareness.

"Horse!" she bayed. "Horse-horse-horse!"

"Ride-ride-rider!" Lobie yipped, joining Pansy in the alert. "Horse and rider!" Both dogs whirled about in quivering anticipation, staring down the path they had just travelled. The entire party ground to a sudden, prancing, nervous halt, and faster than Susan could ever have imagined possible, she, Queen Lora and Na'mia found themselves bundled snugly into the centre of a bristling, snarling, spear-levelling group.

"Danger?" Na'mia asked softly. Susan, sitting straight and pale in her saddle, shook her head slowly.

"I cannot say . . ." she looked down at the dog beside her. "Lobie?"

Lobie's nose was twitching with frantic enquiry. Pansy, closer to the outskirts of the defensive knot of horses, riders and other folk, also seemed to be making queries of the breeze blowing over them, but neither dog appeared moved to aggression. To the contrary, Lobie's tail began a sudden, eager assault on his own flanks, and Pansy's did likewise.

"Safe!" Pansy carolled. "Safe-safe-safe! Boy-boy-boy!" and then she bolted eagerly down the path, for Prince Corin had a terrible habit of dropping scraps under the table while he ate, and even Talking Dogs are not averse to a little begging when the mood takes them. Pansy had a particular fondness for Prince Corin.

Pansy met Corin's pony just as it topped a low ridge and came into clear view of the travelling party. As Pansy bounded and bounced around pony and rider, making known her pleasure at encountering them, Queen Lora's expression was decidedly less welcoming, and her words, as she received her cheery son, still less so. After she had given voice to her initial displeasure at his recklessness, she went onto lecture him with lesser volume but greater distress.

"'Tis not a game, my boy!" she exclaimed. "This business of creeping out and exploring as though these woods were safe for children— 'tis madness!" She was clearly torn between unQueenly shouts and floods of tears as she lectured. "These woods are yet overrun with beasts and monsters that would do us all most grievous harm, and art no knight yet, my boy; art a child still, and . . . and . . ." Tears were clearly winning the day as she reached down, dragged her son from his pony and clasped the squirming, blushing, mortified boy to her breast, squishing him down on the saddle in front of her as one does an infant who cannot yet seat his own pony. "Corin, art my dearest and most precious treasure in this and every world. I would die before I saw thee harmed."

"Mama," Corin muttered, "Mama, you're squishing me."

"Yes, well," Queen Lora snuffled into his hair, "I shall do a great deal more than that, ere I am satisfied shalt not pursue me in this fashion again. Now! Back to the castle with thee."

But this edict was not to be carried out, for an examination of their ranks soon provide they could not spare the numbers that Queen Lora would deem sufficient to protect her son. Instead, Prince Corin was to accompany them to the estate at Eastford— although his mother insisted he would ride with her on her horse, because clearly the responsibility of having his own pony was yet beyond the child's ability to handle properly.

"Until canst behave as a young gentleman who respects his mother's edict," Lora scolded, as they topped the last ridge before they reached the river, "shalt ride with thy mother and disregard her at thy peril."

Susan, watching this exchange out of the corner of her eye, felt a smile tugging at her lips. She fought to keep it under control, and found she was fighting it still as they left the main path to follow the narrow, less-travelled trail that ran alongside the Archen River. They fell into single file at this point, so Susan could no longer observe the exchange between mother and son, but she could still hear most parts of it. As far as Susan could make out, Queen Lora's lectures continued unabated even as the sun rose high in the sky, the river widened beside them, and the riverbed deepened into a gorge. It was only when the sun began its descent from the heavens and the party rounded a sharp bend, at last coming in sight of the estates of Eastford and Westford where they flanked the ford of the Archen river, that the Queen seemed to have talked her anxieties into something more manageable, for she fell silent at last, as did the rest of the little company.

"This is Eastford?" it was Na'mia who spoke, studying the property before them. Susan drew Norry alongside the Calmirian's horse to make her reply.

"On this side of the river, yes. On the far side of the river lies Westford— yours, milord, an I am not mistaken?" she looked to Magnus, who was regarding the properties as well. He did not give assent.

"My title to the property remains undecided," he observed, and Susan nodded.

"Of course." She looked back to Na'mia. "Shall we not move closer, that you might better see what you seek to claim?"

Na'mia was in agreement and so the party journeyed on, halting only at the gates of Eastford castle. These were opened by Pollus and then all passed through, dismounting in the stableyard and setting to stretching and kneading at their own necks and arms and backs, which were stiff from so much riding.

The horses had their saddles loosened and bridles were removed, allowing them to make good use of the remnants of hay that had been stored there when Lucy and Susan had first visited the estate with their own company. Water was drawn for them from the castle well, and Susan urged Na'mia to taste the water for herself, which was found to be sweet and pure.

"The well runs deep into the rock," she explained, as the Calmirian girl made appreciative faces at the taste of the cold, clear water. "It is drawn from the river, and from what the records tell us, was much prized for its consistent purity."

"This is indeed treasure," Na'mia decided, and for the first time since Susan had laid eyes on her, the girl smiled. Then she confessed an eagerness to see more of the castle, and so with both Queens, Prince Corin, Magnus and Fergus all in close attendance, she began to explore.

As they moved from one room to the next, Susan gave commentary on the nature and purpose of each chamber. She added what points she could recall from having researched the history of each property with Lucy, and as far as she could tell, Na'mia seemed favourably impressed overall. She did not, however, converse much. At times Magnus would knock his spear against some object or other and put a question about it to the Narnian Queen, which Susan would answer, but Na'mia herself seemed content to listen. Only once they had toured most of the castle did she finally voice a preference of her own.

"I should like very much," she decided, "to see the grounds beyond the castle walls. There are homes for tenants, are there not? Farms, and such?"

Susan agreed that there were, and said she would be happy to show them, but at this offer Fergus, who had to that point remained as silent as Na'mia, stirred uneasily.

"My lord?" he murmured, and Magnus grunted in acknowledgment.

"Is this wise, your Majesty?" he wondered. "The woods holding dangers as they do . . . are these tenements safe for exploration?"

"They are as safe as our guard can make them, I am sure," Susan said. "But I would hear the counsel of my guard and of my good cousin," with a nod to Lora, "if they would consent to offer it."

"I would hold that the tenements are no more dangerous than the wood itself," Queen Lora decided. "The company of our guard should be ample deterrent to any who would do us harm."

"Very well, then," Magnus nodded, and quelled mutterings from Fergus with a single, hard look. "If the Queens see fit to recommend it, we will take a look."

They took a look, but they did not take Corin. He protested mightily, but his mother insisted on leaving him in the company of Pollus, Pansy and the horses as the rest of them set out to explore the little dwellings that surrounded the castle. It was, she explained, more out of her desire to deprive him of some of the delights of his own disobedience than any concern for his safety that she left him there, and nobody elected to question her, so Corin remained sulking in the courtyard as the rest of them ventured out.

What happened next was, Susan would say for years afterward, not in any way anybody's fault. More accurately it was, perhaps, a little bit of everybody's fault, but Susan was not the sort of person to say such things, and so it was never said.

Pansy was not given to indulging the sulks of her own puppies and had no interest in indulging the sulks of a human puppy, no matter how well she loved him, and so she set off on a little expedition of her own around the castle yard. She poked into corners, wandered in and out of utility rooms and generally made a memory of the place while Corin was indulged by Pollus, who had no colts of his own and was rather smitten with the fearless little Prince.

So it was that Corin was able to cajole Pollus into boosting him up to the lowest parapet, a sturdy enough walk on a low wall that overlooked part of the wood that had grown up against the castle. For quite a while Corin was content to make his games up there, shouting down to Pollus all that he could see. I am almost positive, too, that he meant no mischief when, on sighting something moving in the wood below him, he leaned out over the winter-worn wall to get a better look. However, when Pollus finally realised that the Prince was attending to something he should not, and shouted a warning for the boy to come down, Corin was having none of that and instead leaned out a little further onto the wall . . . which crumbled beneath his little hands, sending him sliding over the top, and down to the forest floor below.

Pollus let out a shout of alarm at this, and Pansy, scampering out from the stables to see what could have set the Centaur to shouting, saw that Corin was not where he should be —namely, anywhere within reach or even sight of them— and did what any sensible dog would do: she threw back her head and gave voice, then bolted forward to see what the fastest way of fixing everything might be.

And when Corin, picking himself up from a nice, springy ground covering of moss, turned around and saw before him the most hideous, fearsome creature he had ever before seen in his few years— well, the shriek of terror that escaped him at the sight surely only spurred Pansy to run all the faster.

O0O0O0O

All those who had not stayed behind in the courtyard went about together from cottage to cottage, farmstead to farmstead, digging here and there at foundations, pacing to and fro across overgrown fields, seeing beneath the dust and the remnants of riotous spring and summer growth the evidence of lives once lived. Na'mia attended to Susan when the Queen spoke, but in the silence between explanations she made her own way, wandering about, here resting a hand on a doorframe that had withstood the Witch's winter, there stooping to examine a plant that sprang up from the earth in defiance of the choking weeds around it.

"The people who were once here," she murmured, "they would perhaps be pleased to know they did not labour in vain." She stood in what had once been a fertile, tended field, looking about in all directions. "They are gone, but the work of their days, the expenditure of their lives . . . it is still here."

"Awaiting someone to take up in their stead," Queen Lora agreed. Na'mia made no answer to this, though, and Susan was again conscious of confusion and concern. She had not expected Na'mia to burst into raptures of delight, of course, but all the same she had hoped to see . . . what? Some sort of yearning, at least. Some sensibility on Na'mia's part of her connection to this land; perhaps some desire to deepen that bond and become mistress of a people who would rely on her sound judgment and her respect for their labours in her governance of them. But instead . . . Na'mia looked only thoughtful, and a little curious.

"If you will permit a question?" Susan addressed the girl, and Na'mia nodded. "Tell me then, what was it that first made you want to come here? When you received word of the petition you were entitled to make, what was it that swayed you to accept?"

For one moment Susan thought she would be denied a reply. Certainly Na'mia seemed to be weighing the merits of making one. At last, the young woman seemed to reach a decision, and answered.

"I was told—" she began, but what it was she had been told would not be revealed at that time, for she was cut off mid-sentence by a sudden, horsy shout, the hysterical baying of a hound, and —the sound that brought a scream to Queen Lora's lips— the thin, terrified shriek of a child.

Of one accord the party bolted from the field, none giving heed to one another, each bent only on reaching the spot whence the sound had come. As they all left at the same instant and none checked their speed for a moment it was a poorly matched race, for a Cat can outdistance a human in seconds, and the accompanying three naturally did. However, Cats do not seek best by sound, and these three lost precious time by ending up in a spot some hundred yards off their mark, which meant that Lobie was the first to find Corin, followed closely by the humans.

For the space of two or three heartbeats, Susan actually thought that all was well. Corin was standing when they found him, clearly frightened and upset but also not noticeably hurt. There were a few scrapes on his knuckles and a single, shallow scratch down his arm, but these showed nothing more than a few drops of blood, and he was clearly more delighted to see his mother than he was concerned about such trifling wounds.

Then Susan saw the Hag.

She had been partially shrouded by the shadowy thicket at her back, and her clothes were made of stuff that seemed made to blend in with the forest around her, but once sighted, there was no way anyone could have forgotten her. She was a loathsome, repulsive creature, so close to personhood as to be made all the more disgusting by the vile stench of Not Quite that hung about her. Her skin was a little too coarse and leathery, her nose and chin a little too sharp, her gimlet eyes just a little too cold and calculating for her to be mistaken for a human.

She held in one clawed hand a wicked, crooked dagger, and not only was the point of it held within striking distance of the little Prince, but the moist gleam on the tip suggested she had already struck. Susan's eyes flew again to the scratch on the boy's arm, and yes— it did look too straight, too clean, to have been made by a common bramble bush. Then she looked back to the Hag, who was cackling with delight at the sight of the newcomers. Her cruel eyes swept them all appraisingly.

"So it is Mama, come bleating for her little lamb," she decided, assessing Lora. "And it is an angry, angry man, yes, mmm, powerful, not scared at all." She regarded Magnus in open delight. "Another such, too, a little fearful, but not very, not very, don't fret, dearie, nobody doubts your courage good my lord," and she went off into a bout of hysterical cackling that had Fergus glowering fearsomely before she regained control of herself and continued. "A funny little girl, smells of sand, of stone, of . . . mmm, strength . . ." Na'mia remained stonily impassive. "And . . ." the Hag looked last at Susan, and Susan, in spite of herself, found she was listening, leaning forward, wanting to hear what the creature would say. There was a terrifying sort of appeal about her as she tipped her head, birdlike, and studied the young Queen.

"Royalty . . ." she spoke the word the way some people savour rich food or fine wine. "A Queen . . . oh a Queen . . . not married to it, not thrust into it, _born_ to it, a thousand times more a ruler than the Princeling, dear lost lambkin, will ever be . . . born to it, she's _born_ to it . . ." her eyes glazing over, her voice thick with hunger, the Hag moved forward, toward Susan, her dagger raised.

I do not know what power the Hag held over them that day, that they all stood motionless as statues and watched her advance on Susan; perhaps it was actual magic, and perhaps it was merely the sort of hypnotic trick that a snake charmer uses on his pet. I do not know what caused the spell, but as well as anybody who heard the story afterward, I know what broke it.

Pollus had not been able to get out the gate with any speed, and of course being in a hurry he could not seem to make the latch obey him, but Pansy, small and lithe and no bigger around than any active dog will ever be, nipped between the bars of the portcullis as neat as you please and went blazing around the wall of the castle. She burst into the clearing at that moment with a snarl that jolted her packmate from his own trance, and together the dogs bolted forward. Twin blazes of satin brown streaked toward the Hag in the middle of the glen— the Hag who was by now nearly abreast with the little Prince.

And now they could hear it, all of them, dogs and humans alike; they heard the snarls and screams of the great Cats as they fought some other foe they had found in the woods beyond, and they saw the werewolf and the strange, creeping dark thing close to the ground that had crept into the glen as the Hag moved toward them, and clearest of all they saw that the Hag was nearly on top of Corin, but even in the time it took them to see all that, everything changed.

Ears pinned back against her skull, velvety muzzle wrinkled with deadly intent, Pansy left the ground two yards away from the Hag and struck her full in the chest. The creature toppled beneath the weight of the raging dog and Lobie, for his part, darted in to grab Corin's sleeve in his mouth. He yanked the Prince off his feet and hauled him backward, away from the screaming, squealing, snarling, yelping tangle that was Pansy and the Hag intertwined, away from the slavering jaws of the werewolf and the terrifying shadow-thing that slid along the earth.

The boy howled in fright at the dog's grip on him but the strange spell had already been broken, and Queen Lora was stumbling forward, running to grab her son up, clutch him to her chest and fall back, nearly tripping over her skirts in her haste. Susan hovered, uncertain of her ability to be of much use, but Magnus and Fergus suffered from no such uncertainty. They had already run forward, and Na'mia went with them.

Fergus took aim at the werewolf and his shot was as true as any marksman could have wished. The spear felled the animal at once, and Fergus lingered only to retrieve it before retreating to take up a position between Susan and the messy brawl before them.

Na'mia did not waste time in assessing the identity of the creeping, loathsome shadow on the ground but drew from her tunic a thin, silver prong, and fell on the Thing with such finality that nobody could doubt who would emerge the victor; she rose, gasping, a sticky dark substance marring her blade, and she, too, fell back to Fergus's side before she stooped to wipe the weapon clean on the mossy ground.

For his part Magnus held his spear, his eyes locked on the writhing knot of Hag and furious dog, leaving Lobie to deal with covering Queen Lora's retreat to Susan's side. Just as the older Queen and her sobbing son drew abreast of the younger girl, Pollus, the gate finally having yielded to him, came thundering into view, and Susan turned to him with unashamed relief.

"Pollus," she shouted, "take the Queen and the Prince."

"Madam, my duty—"

"Your duty is to those who need you most. Take them!" And so saying she pushed Lora at the Centaur before permitting Fergus to drag her further back from the centre of the battle, push her against a tree and take up a position beside Lobie, the pair of them shielding her on either side from any potential attack.

No attack was forthcoming, however, and the fight that did remain ended with brutal speed. Magnus had waited only for a clear shot, and Pansy had waited only to ensure that her death would not be in vain before she flung herself clear of the Hag and Magnus took the shot her absence presented. The spear thudded home, and the Hag slumped down, dead.

Pansy, gasping, dragged herself yet farther away. The dagger in her side told the end of her story, but Lobie darted forward anyway. He whuffled and whimpered. He nudged her ear with his nose, he bathed her face with his tongue and she looked up at him with a sort of gentle apology.

"Had to be done; you know that. I . . . just got there first," she observed. Lobie snuffled her throat in assent, and whined. Then Pansy's sides heaved once more, and she laid still.

For a moment, all was silent. And then . . .

The scent of Pansy's last breath still colouring the air around him, Lobie sank to his haunches, threw back his head and howled. The sound rattled the greenwood, and it drew the great Cats —all three of them, grimly victorious— to the clearing, where they sat, tails twitching, and contemplated a ritual they could not quite understand. Lobie's song carried high above the treetops, was scattered by the four winds and announced his heartbreak to all who heard. By the time the faint, answering howls of all relations near and far were carried back to them, all those who stood in the glen had bowed their heads in mourning too.

"My fault," Corin whimpered, shivering. He clung to his mother. "Mama, it's my fault." Then he pressed his face in against her, and Lobie, who had heard the self-reproach, stood and turned to refute this.

"She chose it," he explained, his breathing somewhat laboured from giving voice at such length, but his sincerity unmistakeable. "Didn't die because of you, no. She died _for_ you. There's a difference. Loyalty. Sacrifice. We understand those things, our kind does. Dogs do. Humans . . ." he looked at Susan. "Humans who've had it done for them, they understand it, too."

And Susan remembered somebody had died for her, too. For her brothers, and her sister, and for the kingdom they were trying to build.

She looked to one side, where Na'mia stood flanked by her countrymen. Then she looked to Queen Lora, who held . . . "Corin?" Susan looked closer. She had never seen the boy so still . . . "Corin?"

Queen Lora looked down at her son.

"Corin?"

A note of panic crept into the query. Lora shook him, held him up, shook him again.

"_Corin!_"

But the little boy was still, pale and silent, and made no reply.

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** This should have been posted ages ago, but there were multiple issues . . . it was all very trying. Anyway, I have great hopes that the writing will pick up speed sometime soonishly, since I finally have a regular work schedule and for some reason that makes it much easier to do fun things, like writing, in my spare time. Mind you, I do not know if that will actually _happen_, especially since I am also working on a great deal of original fiction and that always takes precedence; just be assured that regular updates to this story rank quite high on my list of general hopes. Right up there beside a well-behaved Internet connection.

A quick note about the names of all these minor characters— I am pulling a good number of them out of thin air. Some names like Magnus, Fergal and the like I obviously heard elsewhere and brought into play here, but a lot of them I am just cobbling together with bits of twine and whimsy, playing with sounds that seem to flow nicely and spelling them out as best I can. This is very fun for me but it also contains an element of risk; I have already discovered that one name I "created" actually exists, and I have no doubt I will discover in time that others do, too. I am currently labouring under the hope that none of the names I've used thus far mean anything particularly foul in some language, but if they do, please tell me! I really don't want to offend somebody by giving a character a name that means Camel Spit, or anything like that (no offence to any camels reading, of course; I just don't care to name a character after your expectorant).

Up next: Wheat from Chaff, in which Peter and Lucy are frustrated to meet an entire family, walk a diplomatic knife's edge, and are grateful to take their leave.


	13. Wheat from Chaff

Wheat from Chaff

O0O0O0O

"Is this a bad idea, Peter?" Lucy looked over at her brother, who glanced at her in that absent way of people who are miles away with their own thoughts— or perhaps the jolt and squeak of the coach they sat in had simply been lulling him to sleep.

"Mmm?" his focus sharpened. "Sorry, Lucy, what was that?"

"I said, is this a bad idea?" the little girl plucked at a spot where her dress was a trifle snug. "To sup with a nobleman in his own house this way . . . it won't look like playing favourites, will it?"

"Well, as you may recall, Lord Regan is not entitled to make a claim to Narnian lands, so I can hardly think how it is that we could favour him, but if somebody is looking to catch us at playing favourites I doubt that will matter to them. Indeed I'm fairly certain they would see it exactly that way, if they chose to," Peter said dryly. "But here, now," looking at Lucy with some confusion, "you didn't worry about that when we called on the Red Road Fishers. Why now? Did somebody say something to you about it?"

Lucy nodded morosely. "Yes . . . really, Peter, I know it's awful of me to say but I think we'll be well quit of this place. Not that there aren't some dear people here, because of course there are, but I'm afraid there just don't seem to be as many of them here as there are other places."

"True enough." Peter nodded. He thought of his week, and the headache that the thought generated was nearly instantaneous. If one more nobleman muttered something about the "Narnian whelp" on being questioned in even the most general terms about his antecedents or his intentions with the land he hoped to claim . . . but Peter quelled the thought that boiled up as one unworthy of him and unbecoming a King.

"Perhaps," he said, with a perceptible effort at cheerfulness, "this evening will prove exactly what we need. A little time away from the castle, a pleasant evening spent with a smaller party than we have become accustomed to— doesn't that sound relaxing?"

"Honestly, Peter," Lucy complained, "you sound like Susan trying to get me to bathe, or something. I know exactly how awful this evening could be so you needn't pretend otherwise. It will be politics the whole time, only it will be politics we will have to pretend are hospitality, so that's even worse. And what's he like, anyhow, this lord? I don't believe I've met any Lord Regan."

"No, he—" Peter hesitated. "He's not much of one for the salons, I think."

"Which is to say you offered him the chance to meet with me outside the council chambers, as you do all the lords, and he not only turned you down but also made some cutting remark about the place of a woman as it relates to politics, am I right?"

She was so very right that Peter actually stared at her, speechless, before finally finding voice enough to say "Lucy, how in the world—?"

"Salons are only tolerable for so long before one needs to look someplace else for intelligent conversation," Lucy sighed. "Since we arrived here I've made friends with just about every steward who waits on you and the council in chambers— oh, did you know that half the time Tupprong looks like he's reading the depositions, he's really just eating the paper? Or that the fat little Count from the north coast of Mull is asleep more often than not?"

"I— no, I didn't," Peter stammered.

"Mm-hm, Muldon told me so. He also told me that you're perfectly civil to even the rudest claimants and he thinks you're going to make an excellent King. Of course I told him I thought so too. Also, he said the only time you lose your temper even a little is when you offer to let them meet me, and they refuse because they don't think it's fitting for them to take instruction from me. He said he thinks they're balmy."

"He really shouldn't talk about what goes on in—"

"Oh don't be so stuffy, Peter, you sound just like them. You share the minutes with me anyway; he knows that. I think just about the whole staff knows that. It's not as if I'm not _me_ or anything. I mean, I _am_ Queen, aren't I?"

"You are very much Queen, Lucy," Peter smiled at the fierce, rather impatient look on his sister's face. "And bless Muldon for remembering what even I can forget sometimes. I don't suppose he'd like to come to Narnia with us, would he?"

"He might. I could ask him."

"Do that," Peter smiled. "Narnia can always use a subject loyal to its Queen."

They both sat back in the coach, then, and let the ride continue in jolting, squeaking near-silence. When the coach finally slowed, and the wheels echoed in a hollow, rattling manner as they crossed the lowered drawbridge of a castle, Lucy sat forward and stuck her head out the window, craning her neck to inspect the building looming before them in the grey evening light.

It was a tall, narrow keep with three smaller towers grouped around it and a high, dark wall wrapped all around. The windows blazed with orange light, every room lit in honour and welcome of the approaching regents. Yet somehow . . . Lucy shivered, and drew back inside.

"Getting a bit nippy," she murmured when Peter looked askance. She didn't want him to have to contrive some soothing reply to the statement she longed to make— that all the torches in the world could not have made that castle look warm.

The coach drew to a tidy halt in front of the portcullis, and one of their outriders (sounding very muffled and far away through the thick walls of their vehicle) shouted at the gatekeeper. The gatekeeper for his part shouted something back, something else was shouted at him in reply (Peter and Lucy were at this point looking at one another in confusion and curiosity) and then finally there came a brisk trumpeting, the gate was raised and the company passed through to the castle yard.

Peter alighted from the carriage first, then turned to extend his hand to Lucy. She stretched her foot down, found the step, and jumped nimbly to the cobbles. Then she and Peter traded one quick, encouraging look before they turned to face their host, who stood waiting to receive them.

Lord Regan was a tall, thin, dark man wearing fine, formal clothes and a genial expression. At his left side stood a tall, thin, fair woman with no expression to speak of and at his right stood a tall, thin, fair boy, a youth who was surely no more than five years Peter's senior, if he was even that. Lucy tried to get a better look at these two persons but their host spread his arms in welcome, obscuring her view of them.

"Your Majesty," Lord Regan inclined his head to Peter. "Your Majesty," he nodded to Lucy, "I bid you welcome to my lands and home; you honour me with your presence. I trust your journey was not unduly taxing?"

"Not at all," Peter inclined his own head. "We welcome the opportunity to see more of the Seven Isles."

"And we hope you shall not find us lacking. May I present to your Majesty my son?" Regan gestured the youth forward. "Peridan, make your greeting to the Narnian King."

The boy, Peridan, made a precise and correct bow. "My lord King," he said politely, and Lucy was surprised to find that his voice was actually quite pleasant, if curiously flat. "It is an honour."

Peter murmured some suitable rejoinder as Regan went on to conclude, "and my lady wife, Anne," without making any indication toward the woman at his left, and without Lady Anne making any movement of her own to speak. Indeed, Regan was clearly on the point of turning and leading them into the main keep when Lucy took it upon herself to step forward. In clear, carrying tones, she addressed their hostess.

"How do you do, Lady Anne," she said, and held out both hands to the startled woman. Peridan stared at the little girl, and Lord Regan could not have looked more shocked by Lucy's actions had the child pulled an adder from each sleeve and waved them about her head. As for Lady Anne, it took her a very long moment and a nervous glance at her glowering husband before she stepped forward to place cold, pale hands in Lucy's own.

"It— it is an honour, Queen Lucy," she murmured, speaking barely above the pitch of a whisper. Then, as if gathering some remnant of courage from a forgotten place deep inside, she added, "you are surely welcome."

Lucy broke into sunny smiles, and Peter was on the verge of trying to ease the palpable shock and tension by excusing this behaviour on the part of his sister as an old Narnian custom when he decided against it. Lucy had done nothing wrong, neither by the standards of the Seven Isles or by the standards of Narnia, and for him to make excuses for her would only make it seem that he believed her to be in error. Instead, he smiled benevolently on his sister and her hostess before turning an expectant gaze to Lord Regan. Their host, still clearly baffled and not a little outraged, correctly interpreted the look as one from a patient guest to the man who had planned the evening, and hastened to act.

"Yes— er— well, if His Majesty —her Majesty— would accompany me, we may make a tour of my home before dinner is readied."

Their Majesties did accompany him, as did Peridan and Lady Anne. On finding herself and the Lady obliged to fall in step behind the men, Lucy did toy with the idea of contriving to step forward and join them, but decided against it. An unconventional greeting was one thing, but to blatantly flout their host was quite another, and Lucy was not such a child as to attempt it. Instead she kept pace with Lady Anne, and tried to make friendly conversation. It was rough going.

"You have a lovely home," she said, and Lady Anne nodded her silent thanks, but made no other reply. "I can't think what a challenge it must be," Lucy tried again, "to keep it properly . . . looked after. My sister and I are having quite a time figuring such things out, yet you seem to have done a lovely job of it."

To this compliment Lady Anne offered a very small smile. Lucy tried hard not to frown. This was worse than pulling teeth— this was like trying to pull teeth when there were no teeth to pull. Determined to get some conversation from her silent companion, she ventured yet another remark, this one about how lovely the castle had looked all lit against the evening sky, and how very charming and welcoming an effect it had created. Was it, Lucy wanted to know, very difficult for Lady Anne to—

"My dear," Lord Regan stopped, and looked back at his wife, "have a care not to disturb Queen Lucy with much idle chatter. I would be loathe to miss aught of import that King Peter has to say."

Of course, Lady Anne had not been the one guilty of chatter, and not one of them in the corridor believed she had been; this was as close to an admonition for Lucy to hold her tongue as her host could in good courtesy make, and the bold-faced effrontery of it stunned both regents. Indeed, on hearing the barely-veiled insult, I am afraid Lucy almost lost her temper. She stopped midstep, midsentence, and stared at Lord Regan in red-faced anger. She might even have said something imprudent, had it not been for the sight of her brother that she caught at that moment. If Lucy was angry, Peter was ten shades beyond livid. Where Lucy had flushed red with fury and embarrassment, Peter had gone chalk-white with rage, and it was the way he looked at Lord Regan in that moment that recalled Lucy to herself. Angry she well might have been, but Peter looked ready to strike.

"Oh," she said, how she kept her tones so steady would remain forever a mystery to her, "I am not bothered in the least, Lord Regan, though I appreciate your solicitude. Indeed, I should welcome your lady wife's further insight." Then she saw the expression on Lady Anne's face, realised what an impossible position this would put the woman in, and took pity on her. "But of course, if she prefers silence, it is my pleasure to accommodate her."

Then she looked back to Lord Regan and smiled as sweetly as she knew how, willing Peter to regain control over himself before their host could look at the boy and see how dangerously close the lord of the manor had come to being called out by the King of Narnia.

Fortunately for all, the steward appeared just then to lead them to the banquet hall, so Peter had three corridors and two flights of stairs in which to get a handle on his temper. Even so, dinner was a strained affair, with Lord Regan's idea of proper conversation being one constrained to the men only. With Peter's replies to his host's sallies terse at best and outright surly at worst, and with Peridan speaking only when asked a direct question, and with the ladies speaking not at all, it was a painful sort of dinner indeed.

There were not even any other people present to contribute to the chatter, which Lucy found odd. True, it was hardly the Royal court with noblemen and ladies in abundance, but surely Lady Anne had at least one attendant; surely the boy Peridan had a tutor or something of that sort. Yet if these were in residence, they were not in attendance, and Lucy, being barred from discussion with all save a woman who was unwilling to make any reply, could only wonder at their existence as she ate.

The food, she and Peter would agree afterward, was certainly the one redeeming feature of the night. It was fresh, well-cooked, and in abundant supply. The wines had been well-matched to the meal, and Lucy even forgot herself enough to issue a small cry of delight when a moulded pastry in the very shape of Lord Regan's castle was brought out to sit before them. They made a fine feast indeed, and at its conclusion were so well satisfied with what they had consumed that it was almost possible to forgive the appalling conversation.

"Now, your Majesty," Lord Regan said, sitting back in his chair, "the ladies will excuse us to discuss serious matters, hmm? I've a mind to discuss the makeup of this new kingdom of yours, for I've a proposition to put to you that involves my son."

If the meal and Lucy's delight in it had been half a step in the right direction to appeasing Peter, the casual dismissal of his sister amounted to twenty steps in the wrong direction. Peter would tolerate a few cutting remarks against his own person, but Lord Regan was trespassing on the one area in which Peter would give no quarter, and Peter thought it high time he was informed of that fact.

"Our Royal Sister," said the King of Narnia in steady, steely tones, "is Head of State alongside me, and privy to all affairs of the same. If it is her choice so to do, then she will hear your proposition and I will hear her counsel thereon. You may not be aware, Lord Regan," although he suspected Regan was all too well aware, "but by all the customs of Narnia you have come perilously close to impugning her honour more than once tonight. I would not presume upon her graciousness by allowing it to happen again— nor, were I you, would I presume upon _my_ good temper. You may find to your cost that it has worn dangerously thin."

It would have been difficult to find an appropriately gracious rejoinder to such a bald statement, and we may be glad that Lord Regan was spared the chance to try. Peter was not in any frame of mind to receive a half-hearted apology, and Lord Regan, according to all widely-circulated reports of the man that I have ever heard, was never the sort to make any sort of apology at all, and so the thing could only have gone very badly indeed had it gone any further at all.

Before it could go any further, however, Lady Anne turned in her chair as if to address Lucy (and, Lucy was heard to say afterward, it was such a shock to the little girl, who had gone unaddressed for the entire meal, that she could only stare in dumb wonder as all ensuing events unfolded) only to happen to knock her arm into her empty plate as she turned, sending the pewter vessel clattering into the centre of the table. The heavy plate knocked into one of the iron stands in the middle of the table, one that bristled with flickering candles that had been melting steadily all through dinner. You would not have thought a chance blow to an eating vessel would have been so forceful, yet this one such was powerful enough to topple the candle stand entirely, splashing wax all over the table. All present attendants at once rushed forward to tidy the mess, and such was the confusion and alarm that any potential awkwardness of silence between Peter and his host was, at least temporarily, allayed.

In the ensuing confusion Lady Anne rose to her feet, made gracious gestures of contrition to the gentleman, and turned appealing eyes to Lucy. Lucy hesitated for only a moment; she would have gladly stayed to offer Peter whatever counsel he thought she might be able to give him, but the obvious entreaty in the woman's expression was impossible to ignore, and Lucy was far too tender of heart to distress her hostess further. So Lucy, too, rose to her feet, made vague murmurs of excuse and gratitude, and followed Lady Anne from the room. There were, she was learning, times suited to bold defiance . . . and times that were not.

She supposed it was a Queen's job to learn to tell which was which.

O0O0O0O

As the young Queen and the Lady made their way down the hall —with Lucy fairly skipping in an effort to keep pace with the much taller woman's stride— there was perfect silence for almost a minute before Lucy decided nothing could be lost by at least venturing to speak.

"Will you say something _now_?" she entreated, and then could have blushed for shame, because this was the petulant plea of a child rather than the long-suffering, tactful enquiry of a Queen. Lady Anne, however, did not seem to mind. She even smiled a little— though only a _very_ little.

"Of what interest could my conversation be to the good Queen of Narnia?" she wondered, and her voice was so soft as she said this that Lucy almost missed hearing the question entirely.

"Well, I am sure I couldn't say, until I'd heard some of it," she decided, then had to skid to a halt as Lady Anne turned abruptly in at a narrow door, a portal so tiny and carefully recessed into the wall that it was hidden from the view of any casual passer-by in the corridor. The door yielded obligingly to Lady Anne's light touch, opening into a very small chamber. On following Lady Anne into the tiny room beyond the door, Lucy saw it was lit only by a brace of torches in one wall and a small fire in a fireplace set in the other. There was one low, narrow couch, to which Lucy was directed, and an even lower stool, on which Lady Anne arranged herself.

"Oh, please, do let me sit there!" Lucy cried, once she saw where her hostess intended to sit. "I am much shorter than you, I am sure I should be more comfortable than you would, sitting there."

This outburst brought another very small smile to the face of that good lady, who then graciously declined the offer.

"I only apologise that I am unable to offer your Majesty another choice of seat," she said, which caused Lucy to look around and see that, yes, the cosy little chamber was devoid of any other place to sit. "I do not," Lady Anne added, "keep much company."

Lucy thought of Lord Regan, and very nearly said she could see why. She stopped herself only just in time.

"I . . . well, I suppose not everyone cares for company," she ventured.

"Indeed," Lady Anne agreed, and they lapsed into a sort of silence for several minutes that might have been dreadfully awkward, if the room hadn't been so warm, and so pleasantly lit, and somehow so perfectly suited to the thoughtful company of just two persons. After only the very longest space of silence did Lady Anne finally speak again.

"Tell me, Ma'am . . . how do you find the Seven Isles?"

Lucy wanted to squirm, but the couch was not squishy enough to make such an exercise a comfortable or even easily-concealed one. So instead of squirming outright, she sat very still, and squirmed only in her own mind as she tried to make a diplomatic reply. It was slow in coming.

"They are very different, I think," she said carefully, "from the last place we visited. And it is different from Narnia, too, of course. I have met many kind people here, though, and I will have a lot to tell my brother and sister when we return to them."

Lady Anne listened to this non-explanation with a sort of tranquil patience that would have put most martyrs to shame.

"Yes," she murmured, once Lucy had stumbled to a halt, "there are four of you, are there not? Four kings and queens?" Lucy asserted that this was so. "And His Majesty, at dinner tonight, he said that . . . you hold counsel? All four of you? Together?"

"Why, yes," Lucy forgot herself sufficiently to look surprised at the question. "Of course we do. It's our kingdom, you know. Ours, all together."

"Your brother, though, Ma'am; His Majesty, King Peter. He is the High King?"

"Yes, that's right."

"He is the . . . the regent in charge over the other three —you, your sister and your other brother— then, is he not? He is the one with whom all decisions _truly_ rest, is it not so? Lord Regan has explained it to me thusly."

"Well, he got it a bit wrong, then," Lucy said, and the expression on Lady Anne's face suggested that to so bluntly refute the accuracy of any statement made by Lord Regan was to border on blasphemy in that gentleman's household. Lucy, who was not a member of that gentleman's household, was conscious of more than slight irritation as she went on. "He's the High King, yes, and strictly speaking he has the final say in everything, but he doesn't boss us around or lord it over us or anything like that. That's not how it works. I don't even believe that's how Aslan meant it to work. Peter . . ." she struggled to put it into words. "He's the only one who could really pull it off, I'm quite certain. He's High King, yes, and he's High King over all of us —Aslan said so himself— but Peter's not like any High King you could imagine. He gets _under_ us, sort of. He boosts us up— he's the only one with the power to do it, after all. He's higher than us, but he treats us as if we're better than him, and in doing so he makes us equal with him.

"It doesn't work that way on paper, of course, because what kingdom would trade with us if it did? They'd forever be trying to get between us and split us up and make— I think Edmund called them schisms, or factions, or something like that. It's something political, anyway, and it would be very grim if it happened. We wanted to avoid that, even the attempts at it, if we could, so on the face of it, Peter is High King, and all formal appeals and such will come addressed first to him. But he never _acts_ like he is, not even for a moment. And somehow I think that makes him a hundred times better than if he'd been —oh, I don't know— a king who knocked us all about and put us down and always reminded us how high he was just in order to make himself feel bigger; do you see?" And she smiled engagingly at Lady Anne, only to discover that Lady Anne saw all too clearly, too very painfully clearly, exactly what a wonderful sort of King that Lucy's brother was. Indeed, Lady Anne had hidden her face in her hands, and was clearly struggling against tears.

"Oh, no, oh, I've done it again," Lucy moaned, leaping down off the couch to put a frightened hand on Lady Anne's shoulder. "I shall never get this right, never, ever . . . my lady, I am sorry; Lady Anne? Lady Anne, please, I am sorry if I've said something to make you . . . Lady Anne?"

The frantic little pats on her shoulder at last caused the good lady to lift a pale, drawn face to smile bravely at the little girl who crouched before her. Lucy breathed a sigh of heavy relief, sat back on her heels and scolded, "you made me think I'd made you sad!"

"No, Ma'am," Lady Anne shook her head. "No, indeed." Then she saw that Lucy was still concerned, so she mustered a softly-spoken explanation. "I think it was only that you described something to me so beautiful, and yet so strange to me, that for just a moment, it hurt me to hear it."

Lucy said well, then, in that case she was very sorry she had said things that hurt Lady Anne to hear them, but she was glad she'd not actually made her hostess sad. And then, because all conversation seemed to desert them in the face of their newfound shared understanding, the pair sat in companionable silence for the rest of the evening, Lady Anne a long, forlorn figure on the stool, and Lucy a small, stout person in a puddle of skirts on the flagstone, rush-strewn floor, until an attendant at last entered to say that King Peter had sent for his sister, and was ready to go home.

O0O0O0O

"Well?" Lucy said, once she and her brother had been bundled into the coach together and started on their way back to King Riordan's castle, and the warm beds that awaited them there. "What was it that he wanted to ask you?"

Peter shook his head, passing a hand over his face. He looked very old, Lucy thought; she couldn't have said, at first, what made him seem so, but on looking at her brother a little longer she decided it was something in the whole _weight_ of him. He seemed to have everything in the whole world pressing down on him, yet he bore it as though he'd been doing so for years. He just looked so very old, and tired, and perhaps a little lost as well.

"He wanted to know if there were any unclaimed properties that might be assigned to his son. He said something about wanting the boy to make a life of his own in the new kingdom. I asked him who then was to inherit all of his property here, and I declare, Lucy, I never did get a straight answer out of him. Something about a distant cousin, but a cousin who wasn't, really, and . . . oh, honestly, I'd give half of Narnia for another chance with those blasted grumpy claimants I've dealt with these past months! As you said, at least _they_ don't mind saying what they really mean. At least with them, you know where you stand."

"Yes," Lucy nodded, curling up in her corner of the coach, "there is certainly that."

"Well?" Peter looked over to her. "What say you, then?"

"About what? Oh, about allowing the boy to come to Narnia and have a bit of land? Well, I don't rightly know that— what was his name, again, anyway? I'm afraid I only heard Lord Regan say it the once, and he said it very fast."

"Peridan."

"Peridan, yes, that's right. He was so very _quiet_, wasn't he? But then, so was Lady Anne. Tell me, did he even speak at all when his father was making this petition on his behalf?"

"Not very much. Lucy, I could almost have said he seemed frightened of the man, but I can't think _why_. Lord Regan doesn't seem a very affectionate father, I suppose, but he certainly boasted about Peridan enough, and seemed quite proud of him after a fashion. Yet the whole time, the boy just sat there as though he'd been . . . petrified into silence."

"Perhaps he had," Lucy pillowed her head on her hands. "Peter, there was something so very _odd_ about that place; both the castle and the people in it. It's not like anything I'd care to find in Narnia, I can tell you that. Lady Anne finally spoke a little, once we left the feast hall, but not very much, and . . . oh, I don't know. Perhaps they _are_ scared of him."

"But what reason could they possibly have to be?" Peter was truly bewildered. "He is Lady Anne's husband; he is Peridan's father. What reason can anyone have to be scared of her own husband, or of his own father?"

Lucy looked at Peter in mingled wonder and adoration. That she, still a child by anyone's estimation, even her own, could to any degree understand something that baffled her older brother would at any other time have given her no small amount of glee, but in this case it only caused her to love him even more fiercely than she had a moment before.

"If you do not see what cause a husband and father can give his household to fear him," she said, reaching out to catch her brother's hand in the darkness of the coach, "if you do not see even in your mind how any man can make a tyrant of himself to those who ought to inspire only his deepest affections . . . then I think Narnia could never want a better King than you, Peter. And neither could I."

O0O0O0O

Long after Lucy and Peter returned from the Seven Isles, they would remember how pleasant their final days there were. It was almost as if that one unpleasant dinner with Lord Regan had served to knock the last few grumbles clean out of them, allowing them to appreciate the solemn integrity of the Islanders to their fullest. Peter paid all claimants the courtesy of civil frankness, and Lucy, for her part, continued to invest all her energy in enjoying the company of the ladies of court as well as the sociable castle staff.

Muldon the steward, after he recovered from the initial shock, was delighted to be offered the opportunity to make a home in Narnia.

"Only, what could I _do_?" he wondered, as Lucy stood before him, beaming with the pleasure of having delivered this news. "Surely your palace is staffed sufficiently. I have no trade, you know; how could I sustain myself? Are there," only half-joking, "opportunities in your wondrous kingdom for those who are utterly useless?"

"Nobody is useless in Narnia," Lucy laughed. "Muldon, we shall find something wonderful for you to do! I am sure that not _all_ of Narnia will be running beautifully on our return! Perhaps we can appoint you to seeing some particular area of Narnia settled, or something like that. Perhaps one of the new noblemen shall want a steward he can trust. I don't know what, exactly, you will do, but I am certain we can find you something."

"Ah, well then if you are certain, your Majesty," Muldon smiled, "then I am sure I have no cause to be otherwise. It will be a pleasure for me to see what place might be found for a fellow such as myself, in a kingdom such as yours."

"And now," Lucy smiled, "it is a kingdom such as _yours_, too, Muldon!" and she put out a little hand to him, meaning for him to shake it, so she got a bit of a shock when he bowed very deeply and respectfully over it.

"Just as though— well, as though I were Queen!" she marvelled, when relating this occurrence to Peter that evening, the very last evening before their departure from the Isles. Then she looked over at her brother, and sighed. "Oh, Peter, don't laugh!" For Peter was, indeed, laughing rather a lot. "You know what I mean— we'd been ever so friendly until then, I suppose I just hadn't expected that he would suddenly behave so formally. I hope he won't become awkward and uncomfortable around me, now that I'm not just a Queen, but _his_ Queen . . . wouldn't that be terrible? If I could never have a friend at home, because I was his or her Queen?"

"Is this truly the gravest worry that burdens you, Lucy?" Peter wanted to know, having at last got the worst of his chuckles under firm control.

"Well," Lucy frowned, casting a restless eye over their trunks, which had been efficiently packed and would be carted out of the room and down to the waiting ship at first light the next day, "it's not the _gravest_ worry, I am sure, but right now I think it is the biggest worry. I _have_ made friends, Peter, even here, where I thought once that I should never make any; I should hate to think that some of them, the ones who will be coming home to Narnia by and by, couldn't be my friends anymore just because I am their Queen."

"Well, Lucy, you _are_ their Queen, and I suppose it's good that they are conscious of it." Peter settled into the comforting embrace of the chair that had become their shared favourite. "Better that than have them be too casual and assuming of your favour. But if you want to be friends with them, I doubt it will be too much trouble for you to make it clear to them. After all," he reached out and pulled her down to sit beside him, the two of them barely fitting the broad seat, "you have never had a tricky time being friendly."

"Hardly ever," Lucy was forced to agree, and tucked her little slippered feet up under her skirt. They did not quite fit as neatly as she had expected them to, but she wiggled around a bit until she found a position that worked, and Peter patiently let her jab him in the stomach and knee him in the thigh until she was finally comfortable. "I suppose you're right, Peter; as long as I am friendly to them, and let them know that I am still their friend, it will be fine . . . at least," she bit her bottom lip, "I _hope_ you are right."

"What, Lady," Peter cried in mock offence, "did I just hear you question the opinion of your High King? Treason! I will not have it!" Then he saw the expression on his sister's face, and his own demeanour was instantly sober. "Lucy? Lucy, what is it?"

"Oh—" she shook her head fretfully. "You only reminded me of Lady Anne, when you said that. Something in the way she looked at me, and how she . . . when I told her that you would never . . ." She stopped speaking, still shaking her head, and pressed in close to her brother's chest. "I am _glad_ you are High King, Peter. Even if I don't always think you are right all the time, and even when I am cross with you and when I maybe even snap at you, a little . . . I am _always_ glad that you are High King. I don't think there could be a better one."

"Well," Peter said, pleased and awkward and very conscious of the unembarrassed tribute his little sister was making by her very frankness, "well, Lucy . . . there is one, of course."

"Oh, Aslan, yes, of course; I should hope that between us, at any rate, that would go without saying. But— but _you_ know what I mean. There's not a person in all of Narnia —I don't even think there is a person in all of this world— that I would rather have as High King over me than you. Even if I were a miserable, starving peasant —which of course I'd not be, since we won't have any of those in Narnia— I should still want no other High King than you. And I shall call out anybody who ever says any other man could be a better one."

And, her gratitude properly, thoroughly expressed, Lucy pillowed her head on Peter's chest and promptly fell asleep, leaving her brother wide awake and painfully, grandly conscious of the weight of his little sister's unswerving fealty. He passed one timid, frightened hand over the tousled gold of Lucy's hair, and watched her head rise and fall with his chest as he drew and let breath. Finally, very softly, he spoke, his voice scarcely pitched above a whisper so as not to wake his sleeping sister. His words were at once both a plea and a promise, and had Lucy been awake to hear them, she would have not been surprised to hear Peter speak them with such prayerful desperation, since Peter always met responsibility particularly well.

"Please," he whispered fervently, "please— may I ever strive to be worthy of those words."

It was, of course, just the sort of prayer Lucy would have expected the High King of Narnia to make.

O0O0O0O

The day on which Peter and Lucy left the Seven Isles was somewhat grey and cloudy, but there was, somewhere above the clouds, the promise of a late autumn sun, and the air was actually quite warm. It was not a bad day, though not an especially exciting one, and as the young King and Queen stood on the deck of the Splendour Hyaline, waving a very correct and formal farewell to King Riordan and Queen Irine, Lucy whispered, very softly, that the day seemed very much like their whole time on the Seven Isles.

Peter choked a little, then covered it with a cough and muttered his hopes that her voice had not carried to the dock.

"Oh, I don't believe so," Lucy said cheerfully, and waved a little harder as the sails of the _Splendour Hyaline_ caught the wind, and the lovely ship was gradually borne away from the deep-water moorings, out into the cove and thence to the sea. "And in any event," she went on, turning to beam at her brother, "even if it did, they shall soon forget what I said, because I'm a Queen who thinks she ought to talk politics and so I'm not of much importance to them anyway! Oh, Peter," with a giddy little laugh, "I'm sorry, but I just feel so wonderful! We're done with them, and we're on our way to Terebinthia, and— and I just want to _jump_! I think now, things will finally start to be _right_ again."

Not very long after, Peter would be forced to seriously contemplate forbidding Lucy to ever say such things again, for it seemed an uncanny trick of that world that just when somebody predicted things would go particularly well, events instead conspired to go particularly, horribly wrong.

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** There are things going on in the lives of people around me that inspired much of the direction and conversation of this chapter. I knew, in a general sense, what I meant to have happen here, but the details were definitely shaped and hurried along by some of these current goings-on, and so I am grateful for that. I hope that the next chapter may come quite fast, too, but I still don't feel comfortable promising anything outright as regards a timeline! I only promise to do my best to get it written as quickly — and as well — as I can.

Your patience is appreciated, and so are all of the reviews you have been so generous as to give! It's always a pleasure to know what works about a chapter, and it's also beneficial to know what parts of a chapter might not have worked as well as I had hoped. I do want to thank everybody who has been so consistently (persistently!) faithful to leave both types of feedback.

Up next: Particulars of Piracy, wherein a King and Queen almost reach their intended destination.


	14. Particulars of Piracy

Particulars of Piracy

O0O0O0O

Nothing particularly terrible (or even particularly exciting) happened to those aboard the _Splendour Hyaline_ the first day after they left the Seven Isles, nor did it on the second day, or even, really, the third, fourth, fifth, or— well, let us just say that a week of sailing can wear on a person, after a time. In fact the journey, for the largest part, gave every appearance of being about as uneventful as a sea voyage can be; it was only on the evening of the seventh day, almost as the seventh day was verging on becoming the eighth day, as Peter closeted himself with the Captain to learn to make some sense of the navigational charts and as Lucy stole away to a quiet corner to make a fuss over the ship's cat, that the first indication came that their voyage might not conclude exactly as planned.

It was Lucy, curled up in a small, cosily-shadowed nook under the ladder leading down from the upper deck, hiding from her bedtime with the purring cat cuddled to her chest, who heard it first— a shout of surprise, anger and alarm all mingled together as one, coming from the deck below. She jumped with a little surprise of her own, and the cat in her arms yowled and scratched in indignant protest.

"Oh! Sorry," Lucy said quickly, and set the sulking little calico queen to one side, scrambling to her feet and knocking her head against the ladder as she did. Lucy saw stars for a minute, but those soon cleared and she tried to reorient herself. It was night time and therefore dark outside the ship, and even darker inside, so the young Queen's only light came from the flickering lanterns hung along the walls of the deck where she, Peter and the ministers made their bed. The noise, though, had come from the deck below, where some of the crew slept and where some of the foodstuffs were stored. The dark hole that led to that deck yawned at her feet, but Lucy wasn't about to stand about waiting for somebody with a candle to come along, and so, picking her footing with supreme care, she started down to the lower deck.

"Hello?" she called, as she set foot on the damp floor and started cautiously down the meagrely-lit passage. "Hello . . . did somebody call out?"

"Your Majesty?"

The voice, Lucy could tell now, was that of the ship's cook. Gordon, like the rest of the crew, had been provided by King Lune to man the _Splendour Hyaline_ until sailors enough could be found in Narnia itself. Gordon was a tall, broad and rather round man, and although Lucy could not see him, she could certainly hear him— he was puffing terribly and sounded more than a little occupied with some exercise or other, but he still spared breath enough for sharp instruction. "Get yourself abovedecks, your Majesty, there's something— ah, ah, no you don't!" and there came the sound of a heavy body diving into something wooden, followed by the sound of that wooden thing thundering and crashing down, rolling about in the narrow passage (the wooden thing would later prove to be several casks of wine; it was a dreadful business, trying to get them all stacked properly once more).

"Gordon," Lucy called, "Gordon, if you need any help—"

"You're not the one to be offering it, Ma'am!" Gordon hollered, and then there came the sounds of a very unevenly matched scuffle, which culminated abruptly in a frantic figure bursting out of the gloom into the dim light at the end of the passage. Lucy leaped back more out of surprise than alarm, and stared up at the wild-eyed figure in front of her.

"Oh!" she cried, and now was wholly surprised, and not even a little alarmed, "oh, why, it's Peridan, isn't it?"

"I— yes, your Majesty, it is— please," the boy was shaking, and his voice, though still as quiet in pitch as it had been that night Lucy met him, was now charged with a sort of intense and unrecognisable emotion. Lucy would later attempt to describe it by saying that it could best be described as the emotion that you would probably feel if you had for years never been allowed to feel any emotion at all, and were suddenly finding yourself permitted to feel every one of them all at once. Peridan didn't seem to be handling the experience very well— indeed, he stumbled, and sank to his knees, and very nearly started to cry.

"Why, you poor thing, you're absolutely shaking," Lucy exclaimed, and put a tender hand on the young man's arm just as Gordon, having extracted his stout self from the crushing embrace of two wine vats, burst from the shadows of the passage as well and laid a rough hand on Peridan's collar, hauling him unceremoniously to his feet.

"Stowaway!" he declared, somewhat belatedly, and gave the boy a firm shake. "And I'll thank you to keep clear of our Queen, boy, for if you think King Peter will be cross _now_—!"

"Oh, no, Gordon, please let him down!" Lucy entreated, trying at least to tug Peridan down far enough so his feet could touch the ground. "Gordon, I know him! We met him back on the Seven Isles."

Gordon looked unconvinced, but at least he did let Peridan rest his feet on the floor planks of the passageway, and as a result of this action the captive stopped looking quite so blue about the face.

"You may know him, Ma'am, but surely he's not been invited to come along, has he? Else why has he been living down here like a rat, stealing our food and water this whole week past, eh?"

"Peridan!" Lucy could not have looked more wounded had her oldest and dearest friend called her a cruel and cutting name. "Peridan, have you, really?"

"No, your Majesty, indeed," the boy insisted, "I've taken no food. I brought my own food; my mother sent it with me. I brought my own water too, but the last of my water skins broke this morning, when the cat put her claws to it, so I did take a bit of yours; I am truly sorry, I tried to take as little as I possibly could, I give you my word."

"That's all right," said Lucy, seeing that their uninvited guest was becoming frantic once more, "goodness, it's not as if we shall be at sea for months; we expect to reach Terebinthia tomorrow, so I daresay we can spare one skin's worth of water. But whyever did you come along to begin with? Surely Peter told you that we'd let you know what we decided, regarding your father's petition for some land for you, didn't he?"

"Yes, your Majesty, he did. But, with all respect, Ma'am, I don't want land that my father has begged on my behalf. I don't even especially want any land at all, if it's all the same to you. I came along now because my mother said I must. The night after you had been there, at our home, she told me I needed to get away to Narnia. She said she wished there were some other way; she said that to skulk below decks on a ship as a stowaway was not what she would wish for her son, but that even the ignominy of being a fugitive was to her mind a better fate for me than staying at home to become my father." He flushed, and hung his head. "You may despise me for it, Ma'am, but I do agree with her."

"Despise you? No indeed, I agree with her too," Lucy said, then flushed as well, because it was, admittedly, probably not the most gracious or appropriate thing that she might have said. Peridan did not seem to mind, though, and even when Lucy said she supposed they had all better go and see what Peter had to say about all this he made no protest, and only looked a little ill.

So the little party made their way back up the ladder steps and, on reaching the next deck, they journeyed down the corridor to the Captain's cabin. It was Lucy who knocked on the door, and it was Lucy who led them all into the cabin, where Peter and the Captain were in the midst of poring over some charts that had been spread out on the desk before them. Peter looked up with every appearance of distraction, but when he saw Peridan, still held firmly in Gordon's grip, a lot of the distraction left him and was replaced by frank surprise.

"What's this, then?" he demanded, glancing at Lucy. Lucy correctly interpreted his unspoken question, and made no bones about answering it aloud.

"Goodness, Peter, I didn't _bring_ him, if that's what you think!"

It was indeed exactly what Peter had thought. He shook his head, smiling just a little. "Sorry, then, but it was a fair suspicion don't you think? After all, there _was_ that Dwarf you and Susan came across in the wood, and then there was the Gull you insisted needed to be found a position in the castle, and don't forget that family of dormice you kept in your room— and they weren't even _Talking_ Dormice! I mean really, Lucy, you must admit you've rather a habit of collecting things that need your help."

"And do you think Peridan needs my help?" Lucy wondered, glancing over her shoulder at the stowaway.

"I think . . . well, never mind what I think; what's he _doing_ here?"

"He sort of sneaked on board," Lucy explained, then was cut off by a gentle clearing of Peridan's throat.

"If— if I may, your Majesty," he said, "I should prefer to answer the King's charges on my own account."

"Why of course you may," Lucy said, and skipped back a bit so Peter could see Peridan clearly, and also so she could make faces and gestures at Gordon until he grudgingly loosed his hold on Peridan altogether, allowing the boy to stand on his own.

"Peridan?" Peter invited him, after a moment's silence. Peridan swallowed.

"It's true, Sir," he said softly. "I did sneak on board." His voice still had that curious, flat pitch it had held when they supped with his father, but he seemed to be making some effort to infuse life into it. It cracked at odd times and went up in all the wrong spots, but Lucy, listening to him, could tell he was trying very hard _not_ to control it, and she could see how difficult that was for him. "After you left our home, my mother came to my room and told me I needed to find a way to Narnia."

"But I had already told you, Peridan, and your father, that you would be notified of my decision in a few days' time."

"I know, Sir. But as I—" he stumbled, swallowed, and passed a hand over his face. "As I explained to— to her Majesty, I do not seek to claim land under my father's direction. My mother explained to me what he meant to do. She had been listening to him for many weeks . . . he forgets, sometimes, that we're in the room with him." Bitterness —the first nameable emotion the boy had exhibited— coloured his tones. "He's taught us to behave in such a way that it's possible for him to overlook us."

"And your mother," Peter redirected him gently, "she had been listening?"

"Yes, she— she heard him . . . she sneaked back into the room to read things he'd had drawn up . . . if he knew she had done this, I don't even know what he'd do." Peridan shook violently for a moment. "It's his desire not to sever my claim to his land, as he led you to believe, but to double his holdings through my position in Narnia."

Peter sat up, suddenly stiff and straight in his chair. Seeing him then you would have found it difficult to remember he was only a boy himself, for he was at that moment a regent crossed, and angered.

"He lied to us?" Peter's tone was dangerous. Peridan swallowed, hung his head, and nodded.

"He did. I did not know it at the time, or I think I would have tried to speak to you, Sir. To warn you. I could not have done it whilst he was in the room, for my life I could not have, but you have my word if I had known, I would have made every effort to tell you the truth."

"You did not know it at the time?"

"I did not. I believed him to have motives other than those he named, of course; my father usually does. But it is seldom known what these are, as he does not see the need to explain himself to me. I am accustomed to never knowing the full measure of his thoughts, only," here the boy shuddered again, "his expectations."

Lucy, watching Peridan narrowly throughout the course of this narration, had come to the conclusion that the boy truly had no control over the spasms that took him from time to time. It seemed almost as though his entire self were coming to slow, jerking, painful life before their very eyes; as though the blood of thought and feeling was finally taking hold of him for the first time in a long time —perhaps the first time ever— and Peridan simply did not know how to handle it all. He was making a masterful job of it, though, and Lucy found herself admiring his efforts as he continued.

"I do not tell you this to excuse my actions, Sir. I only wish you to understand why my lady mother came to me with this news, and why she urged me to remove myself from my father's house. She said —and this, too, I have told her Majesty— that she would rather see me a fugitive on a ship and a stranger in a strange land than she would see me remain in my father's house; to watch me grow up to, perhaps, become like him."

Peter pursed his lips. "And so you came aboard our ship?"

"I did, Sir. My mother packed me food and water enough to get me to Terebinthia, and from our gatekeeper she borrowed money enough that I might provide for myself in Terebinthia enough food and water to see me thence to Galma, where she said I would need to reveal my presence to you, and beg your mercy, for there was no other way to provide for my journey. She had no other way of getting money without my father hearing of it."

"I see," Peter murmured. He was well aware that Lucy, when she was not staring at Peridan in horrified pity, was looking beseechingly at him, awaiting his verdict, but he found he had no acceptable verdict to give. The boy was a stowaway and clearly that had got to be dealt with, but at the same time his reasons were, in Peter's mind, if insufficient to pardon the crime, at least more than amply sufficient to explain it. "I see," he repeated, this time in the vain hope that simply saying so would make it true. But no handy answer made itself known to him, and much as he knew what Lucy wanted him to do, he could not yet see his way clear to granting the pardon he knew she hoped to hear him give.

"Very well, then," he said at last, "I can see no other recourse at this time but that you be confined within the ship—"

"Oh, _Peter_!" Lucy cried, but he ignored her—

"—until such a time as I can determine what more is to be done with you. Gordon?" Peter looked to the cook, who nodded and set a not-unkind hand on Peridan's shoulder.

"Aye, your Majesty, I'll keep him close," he promised. "Come on then, you," and he hustled Peridan, unresisting, from the cabin, leaving Lucy to round accusingly on her brother.

"Peter, really, how could you! After his mother risked so much to send him with us—"

"To send him with us without our _knowledge_, Lucy—"

"—and with a father such as his, it's a wonder he didn't rob us blind, and I'd not have blamed him at all if he had, but he _didn't_, Peter! He's not a bad person at all, I'm quite sure of it!"

"I never said he was a bad person, Lucy; I can't possibly know what sort of person he is since I don't know his character at all. That's just the problem. We don't know anything about him, and until we do, I simply cannot pass a sentence; nor can I have him wandering about the ship as though he were a trusted member of our company when he is in fact anything but. He has not proved himself to me, he has not shown himself to be worthy of our trust, and until he does, I cannot see him set at liberty in our midst."

"But how _can_ he prove himself, Peter, if he's kept locked up like a prisoner?" Lucy demanded. For this question, however, Peter did not have an answer; instead his next remark was made with a pointed glance to the darkened night sky beyond the window.

"I think," he said, "it's time for you to go to bed, Lucy."

"But Peter—"

"_Now_, Lucy."

So Lucy went to bed, but there wasn't a soul who saw her go who could have told you she looked happy about it.

O0O0O0O

Lucy awoke the next morning to the grey dawn. For a minute she blinked at the ceiling, and wondered why she did not feel as cheerful as she usually did on waking. Then she remembered the events of the night before (as well as the late hour at which she had gone to bed) and, at the same moment of her remembering, she finally heard the noise that had awakened her in the first place— the wild clanging of the ship's bell and the shouts of the crew already on deck.

Sleepy though she yet was, there was no way Lucy was willing to miss any of the excitement that had clearly gripped the crew. She surged up out of her bed, and cast about in search of something serviceable to pull on over her chemise. At last deciding that yesterday's gown was not so soiled as to be a completely impractical choice, Lucy struggled into it as quickly as she could. Laces and hooks she left unlaced and unhooked— by now the shouts above deck had become frantic, and she was determined to learn their cause. With the nearest-to-hand pair of slippers tugged hastily over her stockinged feet, Lucy ran from her room, racing down the corridor and clambering up the ladder through the hatch to the top deck.

The cool, damp morning that greeted the young Queen went a long way toward waking her properly. The spray on her face was invigorating, and the tension above decks was unmistakeable. It definitely wasn't the sort of thing a person could sleep through.

"What is it?" she called, and the nearest sailor, for his answer, pointed off to the horizon. Lucy looked where he indicated and for a minute she couldn't see anything at all— the morning mist was still quite thick, and not the sort of thing that one could just stare through. But as her eyes adjusted to the pearly haze, Lucy began to discern shapes. There, in the distance, was the rocky prominence of a shoreline —Terebinthia, she assumed— and there were a few, far off vessels that were likely fishing ships. There was also, much closer . . .

"Whose ship is that?" Lucy asked. Prickles of unease lifted the little curls on the back of her neck, and she felt such chills run down her arms that she wished she'd taken the time to put on a cloak, too.

"Pirates," the sailor said grimly, and Lucy gave a little cry of dismay.

"Oh!" she said, "oh, no! Are they— that is, will they attack?"

"We fear so," said the sailor, still watching the sails of the nearing vessel. "We've run down the flags, of course —would hardly do for them to know who's aboard— but if they've already seen them . . . well. They're between us and the shore, and we're not armed to defend against a full-scale attack."

"Can there be very many?" Lucy wondered, and now had her arms wrapped around herself to ward off the damp and cold.

"What, many pirates aboard the ship? There could be. Can't tell for certain, of course, but going strictly by the size of her, there's got to be well over a dozen."

"And— they'll want to kill us, of course?" Lucy said, and wished her voice didn't sound so very small as she said it. The sailor shook his head.

"Not your Majesty, no. They would want to ransom you, and the High King; perhaps some of your Ministers, too. But yes, I suppose the rest of us would be for it," he concluded, and Lucy was horrified.

"But for them to kill the rest of you— that's just as terrible as if they wanted to kill all of us!" she said. "Can't we outrun them?"

"We could, but to where would your Majesty suggest we flee? They are between us and the shore."

"Oh, no," Lucy said unhappily, "oh, dear— Peter!" for her brother had appeared on deck as well, looking rather more thoroughly dressed than she. "Peter, it's awful, there are _pirates_!"

"Yes, I know; Captain's been telling me," Peter said, and though he looked grim, he also looked resolute. One hand resting on Rhindon's hilt, he crossed to join Lucy at the rail and study the approaching ship. "Right. As best we can work out, we plan to make every effort to get 'round them and make a run for shore. If they should intercept us and perhaps grapple us in passing . . . well, we'll take that as it comes. Lucy," he rounded on his sister, "I want you to get below deck and stay there. The longboat can be launched from directly above the window of your room, so if it should come to it—"

"What, you want me to run _away_?!" Lucy was appalled, but Peter was not to be swayed.

"Yes, that's exactly what I want you to do, if it becomes necessary. Lucy, don't you see, you _must_. You may be their Queen," with a wave at the rushing sailors, and the Ministers who had by now joined them too, "but you're _my_ sister. I must know you are safe, because if ever they were to get hold of you —the pirates, I mean— then I'd give them whatever they asked of me. I'd have no choice. And we can none of us have that."

Lucy looked at Peter unhappily, and wished with all her heart that he hadn't explained it to her in the only way that could make her _want_ to do as he said.

"Very well," she said, "I will. But really, Peter . . . I wish it could be some other way."

"Me, too," he said, and caught her to him in a quick, fierce hug. "Now go— you'll find Gordon and Peridan are there already. Be safe, Lu."

"All right, I— wait," she stopped, looking back in confusion. "Peridan?"

"Lucy! _Go_!" Peter ordered, so Lucy went, and was glad to get out of the open air's chill embrace but sorry she'd not been able to get some explanation from Peter before she went.

On arriving at her cabin Lucy found it was exactly as Peter had said— Gordon the cook, armed with a weighty cudgel, and Peridan, unarmed, both awaited her. They rose to their feet as she entered, and she studied them with friendly curiosity.

"Has Peter pardoned you, then?" she asked hopefully, but Peridan shook his head.

"No, your Majesty; he only refused to have me locked away in a ship that might be taken and fired. He said I deserved as fair a chance as any other to swim for shore . . . it was quite handsome of him, really."

"It's the only decent thing anyone could have done, surely," Lucy said, surprised that Peridan should find it so unusual. The boy gave her an apologetic smile, then, and Lucy realised that perhaps people who always did the decent thing, rather than the seemly thing or the proper thing, had been in short supply when Peridan was growing up. To cover her desire to run over and give their prisoner a great big hug, Lucy gulped a little and said, "well, at any rate, at least he doesn't seem to think you will murder me or anything like that, else he'd never have let me come down here to be with you. That's something."

"It is certainly something, Madam," Peridan agreed, and he looked so consciously solemn that Lucy wondered if he might in fact be trying very hard not to smile at her. Before she could enquire further into this, though, Lucy gave a nervous little start at the sound of something thudding into the side of the ship.

"Was that— what was that? A grappling hook?" she asked, but Gordon shook his head.

"Too light. An arrow, I'd wager, and . . ." he waited, but nothing happened. "And no others have hit us, either; there's a mercy. Like as not they weren't sending off a proper volley, but just letting us know they're armed. Put a bit of fear into us, like."

"Or perhaps," Lucy suggested, "they're just very poor shots."

A moment's silence followed this, and then suddenly, unexpectedly, Peridan gave a little hoot of laughter. His was clearly a laugh that had not seen much use, in the past— he looked quite startled, maybe even a little frightened, at the sound of it, and Gordon regarded the boy with some alarm. Lucy, though, looked at Peridan in frank delight. The only thing Lucy enjoyed more than being happy herself was seeing others happy, too.

"Of course," she added, once they had both smiled at each other, "I wouldn't count on it, or anything like that."

"No, Ma'am," Peridan agreed, "no indeed." And though he could not have known it, the words were the ones his mother had used when she was speaking to Lucy back in the Seven Isles. Even the way he spoke them reminded Lucy of Lady Anne— Lady Anne, who had been so determined to see her son free of their home that she had been willing to risk his dying simply for the chance to see him get away. Lucy found she had to swallow very hard to get rid of an awkward lump in her throat, and it is perhaps for the best that the _Splendour Hyaline_ gave a violent lurch in the water just then, knocking Lucy and Peridan to their knees, for Lucy really did not want to cry just as they were about to be attacked by pirates.

Gordon, who had kept his feet under him at the roll of the waves, risked a glance out Lucy's window to see what was going on.

"We've come about," he announced, as Peridan helped Lucy to her feet. "Looks as if we're going to try to make it past them, to shore . . . it might work yet, that. In a fair race they'd not have a prayer of touching us, of course; she's a rare treat for speed, this ship. But this is no fair race, and they're closing fast . . . it will be a near thing."

It was so very near a thing that they almost made it. Not even a hundred yards more (though of course at sea they are not called yards, I am sure, but I am afraid I do not know that they are called, and so must do only as I know best) and they might have been free and made it cleanly to shore. But the pirates had brought their ship about as well, and were doing their level best to ram the _Splendour Hyaline_, and so I am afraid that, in the midst of the most dreadful crack and boom and crash you have ever heard, the _Splendour Hyaline_ could not quite get away in time.

Those closeted in Lucy's room could not really see all that was happening, of course, but they watched as best they could, and there was no mistaking when their ship was grappled by her attackers— a host of bodies went swinging through the air and scrambling over the planks laid out, and though not every one of them made it over, enough of them did that even those watching from the window could tell that it was going to be pretty awful.

Now, I hope you will not think any less of Lucy if I tell you that it was only at this particular moment that she realised what terrible danger her brother was really in. Up to this point she really hadn't had time to think about it— there was always something else to hold her attention, but now, standing in her cabin and unable to do anything but listen as people above them fought, Lucy thought only of Peter, and was terrified that he would be killed.

"How will they even know he's King, anyway?" she wondered, and both Peridan and Gordon looked at her in confusion.

"Ma'am?" Gordon said.

"Peter! The sailor said they'd not kill Peter because he is King and they would want to ransom him, but however would they even know? It's not as though he's wearing his crown in battle. He's not even dressed so very unlike some of the sailors— what if the pirates think he's a sailor? What if they kill him?"

"Why, he'd tell them, of course," Gordon said, surprised. "Indeed, Ma'am, you needn't worry. There's code words of a sort, used in battles like these— if you need to stop them killing you for a reason like that, there's words you can say. And even if his Majesty's not yet learned them, he need only tell them he's King to have them spare his life."

"Yes, but . . . I don't think he would," Lucy whispered. Her whole world seemed to have shrunk down to just they three, belowdecks, and Peter above them. "He isn't like that. He'd not tell them who he was just to save his own life, and if he thought it might put me in danger for them to know we're King and Queen— he'd definitely not tell them, then. And so they'd have no reason not to . . ." but the thought was too terrible to speak aloud again. She simply couldn't bring herself to do it. Instead, she ran to her trunk, threw up the lid and rummaged around in it until she found the little dagger Father Christmas had given her. She also pulled out a belt, and slid the sheathed weapon onto the belt, which she then tied snugly about her waist.

"Ma'am—" Gordon stirred uneasily. "Your Majesty, I hope you're not thinking of—"

"I," Lucy frowned, "am going up there to make sure my brother doesn't get himself killed. And Gordon," she gave him a fierce, warning look, "I hope you're not thinking of stopping me."

"Unfortunately, Ma'am, I must," he said. "His Majesty has charged me with keeping you safe down here, and I do hope that your Majesty will consent to remain peaceably, or else I might need to see about shutting you up in a cupboard, or some such, which I— I truly do not wish to do."

Lucy did not wish him to do so, either, but she looked for a minute as though she was much closer to rushing for the door than she was to obliging Gordon by remaining peaceably in the room. The matter was decided for them, though, when the door to Lucy's room was kicked in from without, and a pair of Terebinthian pirates stormed in. I do not know if they had been drawn by the sound of voices, or if they had simply been kicking in every door as they went, but I do know they kicked in Lucy's door and I am afraid it was mostly Lucy's own fault that Gordon was looking at her rather than the pirates when they entered.

As you might expect, in the time it took Gordon to spin around and raise his cudgel the pirates had both set on him, and I am quite sure they would have killed him, too, except that Lucy and Peridan both rushed forward to defend the cook and so Gordon was given only a knock on the head that sent him slumping to the floor, that the pirates might more quickly turn to meet the new threat.

Lucy did not find the pirates nearly as alarming as you might expect. After all, she had already seen all sorts of horrible things when she and her brothers and sister helped Aslan defeat the White Witch— so many such that a couple grubby fellows with swords and rotting teeth didn't even rate a whimper. They were pretty fearsome fighters, though, so I am afraid that Lucy wasn't really much in the way of a match for them. We can really only be grateful that the one who seized her didn't hurt the little girl too badly as he bent back her wrist to make her drop her dagger.

The pirate then caught Lucy roughly about the waist and put her over his shoulder, giving her a horrifically clear view of Peridan struggling to get the better of the remaining pirate. It didn't seem to be a fight the boy was likely to win, and Lucy felt positively ill as her captor hauled her from the room, down the corridor toward the ladder. She was also conscious of a grim thought— if by some miracle Peter had not yet been killed or forced to surrender, her capture meant that he surely would be, now.

It was only by sternly reminding herself that she was to be a Queen before all else that Lucy was able to keep from hiding her face in the pirate's filthy neck to weep.

O0O0O0O

I am afraid I can't tell you very much about what transpired on the top deck after Lucy was sent below, simply because it's my understanding that nobody who was actually there knew much about what happened, either. It's often that way with sea battles, though— a fellow knows only what he is doing at that particular moment, and even that he forgets soon after, in favour of dealing with the next thing that comes along. Naturally everybody all around is doing the exact same thing, and so soon it all collapses into one great blur, and if you can remember even one or two things that went on in that time, well, then you've done a sight better than the fellow who hasn't survived to remember anything at all, so you really shouldn't complain overmuch.

I do know that it was not as terrible a fight as some of the sailors (most of them, actually) had feared it would be. There were not enough pirates on the attacking ship to ensure the defeat of the Northern crew, but there were enough to give them a very grim time of it, and a very confusing one, too.

The sailor who had reassured Lucy of her own safety did not survive the battle, I am afraid, but before he was killed he did send seven pirates on ahead of him, including the one that dealt him his own mortal blow. One of the Narnian Ministers, a very nervous Dwarf called Ruggle, also failed to live out the battle. He did not kill many pirates outright, but he dealt many crippling blows to their knees so that once they fell, it was only a matter of time before somebody else happened along to finish them off. Another few sailors didn't make it, either, and I suppose that if you really wanted to hear it I could take the time to tell you how each of them died, but if it's all the same to you I would far rather tell you about somebody who _did_ survive.

Kip the Duck was one such, and a great surprise this would be to everyone, too, for as you may know, ducks are not much known for their prowess in combat. Kip, however, was that prudent sort of duck who knows best when (and I do hope you will forgive me) _to_ duck, and he did rather a lot of this during the battle, choosing with great care those moments when he flew suddenly and boldly up, into the face of some very startled pirate, driving the fellow backwards onto the waiting weapons of whatever Narnian forces stood behind him.

Another who lived to see the end of the battle was Tupprong the Goat, who performed much the same function as Kip— using his horns, he would charge the pirates, driving them back onto Narnian weapons or tossing them overboard. Indeed most of the crew did quite well for themselves, and although they lost men (and Beasts) their losses were nearly nothing when considered next to those of the pirates.

I am especially pleased to tell you that Peter fared much better than Lucy had expected he would (and much better than he himself had expected he would, too, for that matter). He wasn't anything close to the swordsman he would one day become, but we all must begin somewhere, and Peter, at that time, was a fine swordsman in the making. He acquitted himself more than admirably on the deck that day; Rhindon was no longer a clumsy weight in his hand, but an elegant, serviceable tool. King and sword did not yet move as one, but Peter no longer ran the risk of chopping off his own head every time he tried anything particularly daring with it, and he was shocked to find, at some point near the end of things, that when it came to wielding Rhindon in battle he was almost what one might call _good_.

There was no time to think on this for long, though, for the battle had at last turned in their favour, and everybody was pushing the pirates back with renewed vigour, their fear and desperation giving way to grim, glad triumph.

And then Lucy screamed.

It wasn't a loud scream, or a long one; in many ways it was little more than a squeal, and I don't know that anybody but Peter even heard it— or at least, nobody but Peter heard it and knew it, at hearing it, for what it was. But from the time of Lucy's birth Peter had heard her cries, nearly every one of them since she had been brought home, and Peter, even then, had not been the kind of brother who could hear his sister cry and not want to do everything he could to make her glad again.

So when the pirate clambering up the ladder with Lucy over his shoulder slipped, and raked Lucy's leg against the rough wood, tearing her stocking, scraping her leg and drawing a thin shriek from the little Queen, Peter heard it. At the sound of it he turned, and looked, and saw her— his sister, fighting mad, struggling in the grip of a pirate Peter hated with such a sudden, simple clarity that it would have frightened him, if only he'd been thinking clearly. Instead, though, the only thing he could think of was how he was going to kill the man who held Lucy. I do hope you will not mention this to him, because he does not consider it his proudest moment; nothing like, in fact, and quite rightly too. I tell you of it only so you may understand the fury that gripped him as he stood there on the deck, and stared at Lucy and the pirate, and so as a result of this staring saw, quite clearly, what happened next.

Peridan, blank of countenance but very grim indeed about his eyes, came up on the deck from behind the pirate, and in his hand he held a sword that he had taken from the other fellow he had fought below decks. He had long scratches down his arms and his hair hung in his face and he looked as though he might have been the winner or loser in any number of fights, but the only thing that mattered to the King who watched him now was that Peridan be the victor in this one— and so he was. The sword he held was driven, without ceremony, into the pirate who held Lucy. The pirate dropped to the deck and Lucy would have, too, except that Peridan caught her ere she fell, holding her clumsily but gently against him, and then lowering her tenderly so she might stand on her own two feet.

"There," he said, and his voice was gentle, too, "you're all right, now. It's over, you see?"

Lucy, who had not even seen Peridan approach, could only stare at him, speechless, as the battle all around them was won. Then she saw that Peridan was no longer looking at her, but rather staring at something over her head and behind her. Turning to follow his gaze Lucy saw Peter, who was for his part staring at both of them with an expression so very beyond description that Lucy thought she must surely cry simply to see it. But before she could even begin to puddle up he was there, holding her, hugging her, and pressing clumsy, grateful kisses to her tangled hair (for she had not combed it that morning, and the battle had certainly not done it any favours) and proving there in the sight of all assembled that, when it came to those things which mattered to him most, the High King of Narnia was not too proud to cry.

O0O0O0O

There remains only a very little to be told of the voyage of the _Splendour Hyaline_ from the Seven Isles to Terebinthia. There was, after all, only a very little distance remaining between the ship and her destination, and the damage she had sustained was so minor as to make the remainder of the journey quite swift. As they travelled, the survivors were doctored and bandaged and tales were told of what little they could clearly recall of the battle they had just fought. Peridan's tale was the one Lucy longed most to hear, for she told him frankly that when she had been pulled from his side in her cabin she had given him up for lost.

"Yes," Peridan agreed, "so did I. But I thought I had better at least die fighting, and so I sort of kept at it as best I could, and just as I was quite sure he had the best of me, the cat came running in the door."

"Not the ship's cat?" Lucy cried, and Peridan said yes, it had been she.

"She bounded straight up on him— onto the pirate. She raked my arms a bit too, I'm afraid," and he displayed the scratches with something almost resembling a rueful smile, "but it was well worth it, for she clawed at his eyes and bit him about the head until I was able to get his sword away from him, and cut him down and come looking for the rest of you."

"Well," said Lucy, "well I must say that was very brave of you," and she smiled hopefully at Peter, but Peter seemed to be in a whole other world of his own, and had not even a smile for the young man at Lucy's side.

Gordon was brought up from below deck and found to be quite fit, only unconscious, and so he was laid out beside a few others that the ship's physic was working to tend. Lucy got to her feet to help him, and this left Peter and Peridan to stare out at the water before them, but still, Peter did not speak.

The Terebinthians had sighted the pirate ship and heard the sounds of the distant battle from land, of course, but they had not even been able to marshal a defence before the _Splendour Hyaline_ sailed into view, cutting through the last of the mist with a sort of gracious dignity that no amount of scars and pits in her paint, nor even fissures in her hull, could allay.

Although the envoy's descent to the dock was not a terribly grand one, they at least managed to look not too near death, for in addition to the services of the physic the crew had benefited from something else; Lucy had brought with her not only her dagger but also the cordial given her by Father Christmas, and any wound graver than a scratch or bruise had been speedily mended therewith. They also brought with them those pirates who had neither died nor escaped, and charge of these was given over to Terebinthian officers before they all proceeded up a small hill, to the handsome little pavilion where the worried-looking Terebinthian monarchs, as well as a large portion of their capital town, awaited them.

"Hail, cousin, and well-met," rumbled the Terebinthian King, an elderly man with a long, grey-and-white beard. "I am Loriel, King of Terebinthia, and this is my wife, the Queen Ursine."

Ursine nodded her head gently, murmuring a few words of congratulation and rejoicing at their guests having survived the attack. She then turned to introduce a few courtiers as trusted advisors to the crown. Peter and Lucy nodded solemnly to each of these, and then Peter spoke.

"I am Peter, High King of Narnia. I present to you my sister, the Queen Lucy." He indicated Lucy with a single-handed gesture, for he still could not bring himself to loosen the grip he had on her with the other. King Loriel and Queen Ursine made handsome little bows to Lucy, who curtseyed very nicely in return. Then Peter went on with his introductions, indicating each person named in turn.

"May I also present Master Tupprong, a most trusted advisor indeed. Master Kip the Duck, who holds our counsel, and . . . my lord Peridan."

Peridan gave a start of shock. Lucy did, too, and both looked at Peter in deep surprise. Peter, however, did not look at either of them.

"My lord Peridan," Peter said evenly, "is this day best-beloved of our crown, for he has rendered a service beyond measure. He is also the first human to return with us with the purpose of taking up residence in our kingdom— though we have faith that he will be far from the last."

And so it was that forever afterward, when you asked him, Peridan would say that as far as he was concerned his whole life began that day, right there on the Terebinthian shore, as he bowed beside the King who called him favoured and, with the last of the mist finally cleared away, the sun came out at last.

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** Pirates are much more fun and easy to read about than they are to write. I should probably just leave it at that, except my goodness, there is a LOT to learn about Medieval naval warfare, I must say. I mean really. My _goodness_.

Next chapter is well underway, and should not be too terribly long in coming!

Up next: Fever, in which there is fear, and death.


	15. Fever

Fever

O0O0O0O

Arranging progress back to the castle took almost more time than it did to make the actual journey. Queen Lora was at turns both determined to get her son to the physic as quickly as possible, and also determined that he should not be gone from her sight for even an instant. Both could not be true at once, though, and so at last she surrendered her child to the care of the largest Cat, a lithe black Panther queen.

The Panther stood still, tail twitching quietly, as Prince Corin was tied to her back.

"Tighter," the Cat instructed, testing the knots with one long, smooth, rippling stretch. "He might yet fall." So the cords were tightened until the Cat flinched, then inclined her head. "It will suffice," she said, and then she was gone, a silent, sprinting bolt of black silk along the ground, not clinging to the trail but rather diving straight into the wood, favouring the direct path over the easier. The second of the three cats, a Leopard, set off in her wake to serve as a sort of outrider, for the Panther would be unable to fend off any attack with Corin tied to her as he was.

This left the remaining party to assemble itself and progress as rapidly as they safely could. They were a grim little group and nobody spoke for the entire journey, though you could have hardly said that they were silent; the hooves of the horses and Pollus thundered over the ground, the leather tack squeaked and the metal bits and buckles jangled as they flew along the trail.

Everyone was lost to his or her own thoughts, and had you seen them that day you would not have found it hard to guess at some of these. Queen Lora's fear for her son, of course, was palpable; had Lobie not been so caught up in his single-minded pursuit of the scent of their destination, he would have said he could smell it. Susan was wholly persuaded of her own guilt in the entire disaster, as was Pollus, who was bitterly reproaching himself for boosting the boy up to the parapet to begin with.

The thoughts of the Calormene visitors, however, were not so clear on their faces. This was partly a matter of culture, of course; it is not thought becoming of Calormene men to display any emotion other than suitably masculine rage and some slight sense of humour, and a few days in a Northern land where men are expected to be something slightly closer to human were insufficient to break the habit of a lifetime, so Magnus and Fergus both were stoic and inscrutable. Na'mia, too, bore no truly discernible expression on her face. Had you been forced to characterise her feelings at that time, the best you could possibly have done might have been to say she looked grim, and even then you would not have been really correct, since there was something too introspective about her face for her to be _wholly_ grim.

Of course, none of those riding the path day were even sufficiently aware of their surroundings to notice such things; everyone had his or her own fears to contend with, and when at last they reached the castle, they were given no reassurance that would calm these fears. Instead they were met by a grave-faced guard, who handed the trembling Archen Queen down from her horse and led her into the castle straightaway.

This left the rest of them to find their own way down from their horses. The Leopard who had travelled with the larger party went off to find his kinfolk and hear the tale from them. Pollus tenderly assisted Queen Susan to the ground and offered to remove her horse to the stables on her behalf, which offer she gratefully accepted. Lobie went to find his family and share cries of mourning, which left Fergus juggling the reins of three horses, since Magnus, on dismounting, had handed command of his horse's head to his bondservant before turning to extend one broad hand for Na'mia to use in dismounting her horse.

You might not know that this action defied all accepted conventions of their homeland, but Na'mia certainly did. She stared at the flat expanse of callused palm in what Susan, watching the proceedings, could quite fairly have said was the most blatant expression of emotion the girl had shown since her arrival. Apparently Calmirian women are not taught how to conceal their surprise.

"Well?" Magnus said at last. "You planning to stay up there for a while, Tarkheena, or do you care to alight?"

Na'mia's eyes flashed in something that might have been called indignation, but she did not speak; merely took the hand, and swung down from her horse without a word. Once she was standing on the ground good manners got the best of her and she nodded, just once, to Magnus.

"Thank you," she said, then murmured a request for all present to excuse her before she, too, headed into the castle.

"Well?" Fergus said, after a moment's silence had followed Na'mia's departure. He echoed Magnus's phrasing almost exactly. "You planning to stand there for a while, my lord, or do you care to stable this beast?"

Magnus turned abruptly at the dry remark from his bondsman and muttered something that Susan was almost positive he would not have said, had he known that she could hear it. Magnus took the reins of his horse from Fergus and nodded to the Narnian Queen.

"You will excuse us, Madam?"

"Of course," Susan said, and watched them depart, leaving her standing in the courtyard quite by herself. She found, then, that as desperately as she desired to know what had happened to Corin, she couldn't quite bring herself to actually go into the castle and discover it for herself. You might therefore imagine her relief at seeing Edmund come out of the castle at a dead run, making directly for her.

Edmund was not the most demonstrative of brothers, but you would never have known it to witness his reunion with his sister. He caught her in such a crunching hug that the girl's breath went rushing out of her in one quick whoosh, and only released her when Susan began coughing piteously.

"Sorry," he mumbled, stepping back, "sorry, I just— you've never heard anything like it, the screams of that Cat as she came running down the hill. She did it to get us all out and ready for them, I suppose, but it scared the daylights out of us. It was like somebody screaming and dying all at once, only worse. We all came rushing down, and she was there at the gate, and the Leopard too, and the cords around her were so tight we had to cut Corin free and at first we thought he'd been strangled by them, but then the Cats explained what happened, and so . . . there was a Hag? And she is dead? They're all dead?"

"Quite . . . quite dead," Susan nodded, and only now did she have the luxury of turning green and feeling ill at the memory of the slaughter. "Magnus and Fergus acquitted themselves most boldly . . . Na'mia, too, and all were . . . everyone did his part."

"I've no doubt." Edmund looked narrowly at his sister. "Su? You aren't going to be sick, or anything, are you?"

"No . . ." Susan whispered, but here she was incorrect, and the minutes that followed her weak denial are, I think, for the sake of Susan's dignity, best left unmentioned in this chronicle. When at last Susan had recovered herself, Edmund put an awkward, yet somehow strangely comforting, hand under her elbow, and gently led her into the castle to find her bed, and get some rest.

O0O0O0O

Rest, however, proved elusive for the remainder of the week. The whole castle was in a tense sort of panic, not exactly bustling about but definitely not sitting still, either. The physic was closeted in Prince Corin's room with the boy and his parents, and numerous nurses and attendants were by all accounts squeezed in there as well. This left the rest of the castle's inhabitants to work themselves into a fine state, everybody at once trying to find somebody who knew more about things than everybody already did. All that anybody seemed to know what all there really was _to_ know; Prince Corin was ill, and none were permitted to see him save those who were already inside his chamber.

Susan, of course, would never have presumed to intrude upon the King and Queen in Corin's sickroom, but even had she been that sort of person it would have done her no good, for the guards mounted outside the boy's door were now two men deep.

"It's a sad sort of arrangement," Edmund reflected when first he heard of it. "For surely the thing they desire to keep out has already gotten in."

"And yet," said Susan, her hands clasped so tightly in her lap that their bloodless whiteness matched almost perfectly the snowy lawn of her gown, "surely it is understandable. The worst of all things—" she did not need to say what this worst thing was, for the fear of the loss of the Crown Prince was by this point a palpable thing in all the castle— "is yet at bay. Can you not see why they would desire to do all in their power to fight it? Oh, I know," impatiently, "you cannot fight death with sword or bow. But the comfort even of pretending that one might frighten it off . . . this, Edmund, I can understand very well."

Edmund looked at his sister a moment, then nodded and reached over to touch her hands.

"I am grateful," he said quietly, "to have you here to see and explain the things that I cannot understand."

Susan, startled, searched her brother's face almost as though she expected to find some sort of mockery there. She found instead only heartfelt solemnity, and something else to which she could not quite put a name— something that put her shoulders back and her chin up almost at once.

"I do only what I know you would do if I needed you to," she said, and placed her hand over Edmund's. "I do only those things I would be grateful to have done for me, should need arise."

"Yes, I know," said Edmund, and he smiled. "That's what makes it so wonderful, Susan." He looked as though he might be about to say something else, too, but before he had the chance a sonorous clanging filled the room, a sound that seemed to come from far away and yet all around them at the same time.

"Oh what is it?" Susan cried, and Edmund, though he did not know for a certainty, had a very grim, sure guess.

"Somebody else has been taken ill."

And so it proved. One of Corin's nurses had caught the same fever that gripped the boy, collapsing not two steps from the Prince's bedside. She was now in bed as well, and even as King Lune forced himself from Corin's bedside to summon his council, one of the Prince's guards dropped as well.

"It must be a dark magic of some sort," one Archen noble suggested, as they all clustered around the great table, "some poison this Hag introduced into his Highness's arm that now purposes to infect us all."

"If it were such, why would it not claim first those nearest the Prince?" another man countered. "Yet the guard fell ere the rest of the nurses, the physic, or even—" and here he stopped, but King Lune nodded his comprehension and agreement.

"Thou speakest truth, Arren," he said, and Edmund, watching him, thought he had never seen a man sit so heavily. "If it were an enchanted fever, one would surely expect it to be more . . . methodical. Purposeful, even. Yet, as with ordinary sickness, it seems to settle on whom it chooses and spare as arbitrarily as it strikes. Though I do not doubt they Hag had some hand in infecting my— the Prince with it, I very much doubt she intended some full-scale slaughter of our kingdom. Merely . . ." the King paused a moment before he collected himself and concluded, "merely to strike at what we hold dearest, and perhaps take a few others into the bargain."

"But surely this can only ever be conjecture," said another man, one of the oldest at the table. "We cannot know what was in the creature's mind; we can only see what she has done, and bend our every effort to preventing its spread from the castle to the entire kingdom."

"And how does my lord recommend that this feat be accomplished?" Arren demanded.

"Why," replied the first, "we must quarantine ourselves, of course. None are to leave and none are to enter until we are certain the threat is no more."

"The threat," another muttered, "or all those it threatens."

"I do not suggest we must _like_ this solution," retorted the one who had proposed it, "but rather that it is the only solution, if the kingdom is to be spared the threat."

"And rightly so." King Lune inclined his head, then looked some distance down the table to where Edmund sat, and listened, and tried to feel like a King and the ally of Kings, rather than a frightened little boy. "What sayest our Royal cousin, then? He who came to treat with us, and is now, if this motion is carried, to see himself and his sister made prisoner in a castle, prey to an illness that threatens people not their own?"

These words did nothing to soothe Edmund, but it seemed that King Lune had not intended they would.

"I do not seek an answer couched in terms of diplomacy, your Majesty. This is a real and grave thing that my advisors propose, and I will not pretend it might not mean the deaths of many— even of all, yourself and Queen Susan included. As you are a man I am pleased to call my ally and whom I hope I might one day count also as my friend, I would hear your thoughts."

Edmund felt as though the chair beneath him, the table before him and even the very chamber around him were all growing much larger than he. He fought the urge to duck his head. He fought the inclination to run from the room. He told himself that he _must – not – cry_. He desperately wished he might know how Susan would feel about this, for it was her fate he decided with his answer, and that suddenly seemed to him a far weightier responsibility than he ought to have.

Worse yet, he saw too, it was not only the fate of his sister he commanded but also of all those who had petitioned to become his subjects. Some, yes, had found lodgings outside the castle, but a great many were yet inside. Those Archenlandish nobles who sought to become Narnians, and the Calormenes who asked the same— when he spoke, he spoke for all of them. The weight of it seemed for a moment as though it might crush him, but then . . . a narrow point of entry seemed to present itself before him. The words he spoke, the young King felt, must be shaped to fit this opening perfectly, so Edmund spoke them with particularly measured care.

"What ally would Narnia be, did she not offer aid to her friend Archenland? What King would repudiate his cousin for fulfilling his own duty to the Archenlandish people?" Edmund raised his chin and held Lune's gaze. In that moment the men saw and understood each other, and were not only allies, but were suddenly also friends. "My good cousin may have assurance of our presence and support as he makes the choice that best serves his people— and ours."

King Lune studied the boy's face for a long moment, and then nodded just once.

"So be it," he said quietly. "Ready the smoke to go up from the parapet; we must let the whole of Archenland know that none are to leave, and none are to enter. We are under quarantine."

The council broke, without ceremony, not long thereafter.

O0O0O0O

"Is it— that is, are you— is it all right?" Edmund stood before Susan and studied her with ill-concealed anxiety. He had just rushed pell-mell back from the council chamber in order to ensure that it was he who first broke the news to her. "I know it's rather awful, it— that is, it—"

"It's fine, Edmund," Susan interrupted, speaking with a tranquility she did not exactly feel. "I won't say it's perfectly all right, because it's really not, but it _is_ fine. You made the best possible choice you could have."

"Yes, but— but _did_ I?" Edmund shook his head. "I'm not so sure. I think I might have at least asked King Lune if we could send _you_ away. I think he would have said yes. After all, where could you go but back to Narnia? And it's not as though there are any other humans there to spread this . . . whatever it might be."

"Yet who's to say it might not affect the Beasts too?" Susan pointed out. "I could never risk the lives of our subjects in such a manner. And as to the rightness of your choice . . . Edmund, I know it must have been the right one simply because I cannot see you being so careless in such a situation as to make a wrong one."

Edmund suffered a small shock at this blatant confidence in his powers of judgment, but he rallied quickly.

"I— well, thanks awfully, Su. That's . . . that's something."

Susan smiled at Edmund's bewilderment, and nodded to the chair behind her brother. "Won't you sit?" she invited. "It seems we are to be granted some stretch of time in which to better consider the petitions of those who hope to come home with us, when all this is done. And Edmund," at seeing the doubt that yet assailed the young King, "it _will_ be done, some day. I do not doubt that some day we will all four of us be together at home, in the Narnia we have built, and we will look back on this time with nothing more or less than a fond remembrance of how lost we felt and how wonderfully far we have since come."

"I hope you're right," Edmund said, and although he still looked troubled, he looked markedly less so than he had on first coming in (indeed, when he had burst into the salon the expression on his face had been such that Susan first feared to learn the entire castle had been taken ill, or perhaps even killed).

"Now come, brother," Susan commanded, extending an imploring hand to soften her autocratic tones, "and sit with me a while. For surely if we have nothing else at our disposal at present, at least we have time."

The ghost of a smile haunted Edmund's face as he complied, settling however uneasily into the chair that Susan indicated. His smile then became something cheekier as a thought struck him.

"What, sister," he remarked, "have you no ladies with whom to hold conference? Am I the best choice there is?"

Susan's lips quirked. "If I said you were," she asked demurely, "would you strike me?"

Edmund laughed, then— a short, startled burst of sound that surprised him even more to hear it than it did Susan. Clearly, the King of Narnia had not been expecting to laugh.

"I would not hit you," he promised, and this time his smile was in much stronger evidence. "Indeed, Susan, I—" he swallowed, then finished, "I am most grateful that you are here."

And so the King and Queen of Narnia smiled at one another, and held a quiet, ever-so-cautiously merry salon until the daylight beyond the window dimmed, and a maid came in to light the tapers.

And they found, closeted together as they were, that it was very nearly possible to forget that beyond their private room in that quiet corner of the castle, the Prince lay gravely ill and his parents, united in fear, refused to leave his side.

O0O0O0O

It is a sad and long story that I could tell you now, if I thought you cared to hear it. I could tell you of how the fever spread throughout the castle that winter, not as wildfire nor even as a flood, but rather like the lightning in a hot, dry summer storm. It struck at random and without warning, and before it ended —for it did, indeed, eventually end, as Susan had known it must— it would take many lives.

I am afraid I do not much like to tell you of the people whose lives it took; I hope you will not think less of me for it, or indeed any less of them, for they were all good people, as people go. Corin's guard recovered, but his nurse did not, and she was much mourned. So were all those who followed after her; among those buried in the cold, hard ground during those dark months were the nurse, a cook and three maidservants. A man who had journeyed from the southern reaches of Archenland to make his petition was taken too, and so were two men from Calormen.

These last three persons in particular Edmund made a special point of honouring. He spoke quiet, somewhat clumsy words as they were lowered into the earth (earth which had first been thawed by lighting fires above it, for though Archen winters were not as severe as Narnian winters they were still cold, and saw snow) and all those who heard him could not doubt the heart that lay behind his speeches. Nor did they doubt that the young King of Narnia was in a bad way indeed; the boy's face was drawn and pale, and he might even have leaned on Susan for support, had she not looked even more wan than he.

Indeed, the sight of Susan over the course of the bleak winter both comforted and terrified her brother. Edmund knew he could not have borne the weight of this thing alone, and was mightily glad to have her by his side, but at the same time he feared for her life. If he were to see her struck down in the manner of the girl who had come in on that first night to light the tapers, the maid who had blushed to find her actions observed and now would never blush again . . .

He went to Susan the night they buried the maid and one of the men from Calormen. He sent a startled and sleepy maidservant to the Queen's chamber, requesting her presence in the salon at an hour when they both should have been in bed. Susan already knew what Edmund meant to ask her, and she had determined to make the reply she knew would displease him, so she had marched into the room like some fierce, avenging thing quite unlike her own self, and things had only gotten worse from there. Ultimately they faced each other in the room that night and quarrelled, the pair of them, in low, stinging whispers.

"You must leave, Susan, you _must_," Edmund entreated. "Oh don't be such a fool! If Peter comes home and finds I could have got you safely away, but didn't . . . Su, if you were to— if you—" But he could not say it. He refused to let the words pass his lips.

"I will not leave," said Susan. "I will not go. I do _not_ advise that you try to make me." As she stood there and said this, Edmund could not help but feel his sister looked far too grand to be a girl of such tender years. The moonlight from the windows cast Susan's face in sharp relief against the blackness of the empty salon, and Edmund saw something in her expression that he could scarce even recognise.

"Edmund," Susan said, and some of the ferocity had left her whisper, though not her face, "Edmund please do not think I am not frightened, for I am sore afraid. But I will not leave. It would be the worst, the lowest, the most despicable thing of all for a Queen to flee when those who seek to call her their sovereign are yet endangered. I will not do it and I warn you now," here the unrecognisable thing in her face grew strong and fiercer still, "do not ask it of me again."

Edmund, in a low and cracking voice, swore to her that he would not. Then he waited until she had left the room, returning to her own chamber and the fitful sleep that awaited her there, before he took himself into the darkest corner of the empty room and struggled against tears.

O0O0O0O

Prince Corin recovered first. It was a slow thing to begin with, starting only with him opening his eyes and looking around the room. He could not do more than this for many weeks, but one morning very late in the winter he sat up a little bit to ask for his mother and from there he improved rapidly each day, until one morning Queen Lora was jerked from a wretched semblance of sleep to find her son perched at her knee and asking if he might have marmalade on his toast that morning.

It was the observation and knowledge of the Prince's recovery that gave everyone around him renewed strength of heart and courage, and shortly thereafter others began to rally, too. The Prince, unaware that he had been the cause of so much grief and also so much joy, played quietly in his nursery under the exhausted, watchful eye of his mother, who refused to be drawn from his side.

King Lune would have dearly loved to sit with them both every hour of each day as winter melted away into a quiet, hopeful spring,, but he found himself needed elsewhere. The council met daily now to assess the state of things, and although their number had been briefly reduced, as several of the men were struck down by the fever, they found themselves gradually restored. On the first day when all were once more present, the question of maintaining quarantine was raised.

"Surely the worst has passed," Arren said, "and we can open our gates once more."

"The worst may have passed, yet still there are those among us who are ill," scowled another. "It is true that those few who are yet abed appear to be on the mend, but . . ."

"But who's to say another will not yet be taken sick?" concluded one fellow who was only rejoining them for the first time since he had been found unconscious two weeks before, and been taken straight to bed. "Indeed."

And so the quarantine remained in place. A thick column of green smoke, dyed thusly by a powder cast over the burning coals in the brazier on the parapet, continued to warn all who saw the castle that there was an illness within. And so it was that one afternoon Edmund, his desire to see his sister safely away gnawing at his very soul, fled to the courtyard, where he found Magnus of Westford, swathed in a heavy scarlet cloak to ward off the damp spring chill, in a rare state of solitude.

"Your man is not unwell, I hope," Edmund said, after they had exchanged greetings. Magnus shook his head.

"Fergus? No, he's taken himself off to have words with his cousin. Gives me a few minutes' peace, at least . . . time to think. And you, O King?" he glanced down at Edmund. "You are without the Queen; not the usual state of things, either."

"Susan prefers to offer her services in the sickroom as of late," Edmund muttered, and tried to ignore the way his stomach churned at the very thought. If Susan were to collapse the way the others had done . . . if it were to be Susan who had to be carried to her bed, and he who had to sit at her side and wonder if she would ever awaken . . . he banished the thoughts with an angry, fierce cry. Magnus had the grace not to appear discomfited.

"You have not sent her away, though," he observed. Edmund shook his head.

"I tried. She will not go."

Magnus blinked, as though the idea of a woman who knew her own mind and made free to act on that knowledge was one to which he had yet to become fully accustomed. He looked thoughtful shortly thereafter, however, and Edmund, watching this progression play out on the man's face in a series of expressions so subtle that it had taken the King all these weeks to know them for what they were, found himself moved to speak.

"Why do you want to claim Westford?" he asked, and could not have said whether he or Magnus was more surprised to hear the question asked aloud.

"Does a man need reason to want what is his own?" the Calormene wondered. Edmund frowned.

"In this case . . . yes, I think so. Because a month ago, when we were burying Irrosh . . . Fergus said something, you know, about some sort of combat you meant to undertake. He said something about an opportunity you had in Calmir and the way he spoke made it pretty clear that you meant to accept it if you could."

"Fergus should mind how he speaks, then, shouldn't he?" Magnus muttered.

"So it's true?" Edmund asked. "It's true about this combat . . . thing?"

"It is, and it isn't," Magnus shrugged. "I had it in my mind, yes, to undertake the challenge of our capital city, and Fergus knew that I did. We're ruled in Calmir by a warlord, you see; not a Tarkaan in the traditional sense. Tarkaans are made such by right of birth, but the warlord takes his office by right of combat. There's a trial held every few years to determine whether the ruling warlord keeps his title or yields it to a newcomer. I had thought that I might try my hand at it, but . . . instead I came here."

Edmund frowned, working this out. "Why?"

Magnus's jaw tightened. The set of his shoulders grew tense. One does not say something so brusque and dismissive as "I had my reasons" to the man he hopes will be his King, but it was pretty clear to Edmund that Magnus wanted to.

"You must understand why I'm asking, surely," Edmund pressed. "It has bearing on your case, don't you see? The reason you gave this up to come here, to make your petition; it will affect the way I view your claim."

Magnus nodded. "I see that clearly enough," he agreed. "However, my reasons . . . if it's all the same to you, my lord, I would prefer to keep my reasons as my own, at least for the time being. At least until this," and he nodded up at the sickly-green smoke that still rose from the parapet above their heads, "is behind us, and I am perhaps in a better position to know my own mind on the matter."

"That's fair, I suppose," Edmund allowed. He wondered if he ought to say something more, but before he could do so Magnus straightened, coming almost to attention, as it were. Edmund, following the older man's gaze, saw Susan emerging from the castle into the courtyard with several women grouped around her. He recognised the group of noblewomen and maidservants who had appointed themselves sickroom nurses to the ill; Archenlandish women, the three Calormene ladies and, of course, his sister.

Susan was making her excuses to the majority of the group, and when she broke away to join Edmund she brought only Na'mia with her.

"Is it . . ." Edmund tried to think of some neutral way to ask it. "How is it, then?"

"People are unwell," Susan said quietly, "but we have the privilege of seeing them improve greatly. I do not think it can go on much longer."

"A month, at most," Na'mia agreed. "Likely less." Edmund, who was far more concerned at how weary Susan looked, did briefly notice that the Calmirian girl looked tired too. He wondered when last she had slept; he knew exactly when last Susan had slept, because he had ordered her attendant to come and report to him the moment she found time to rest. Autocracy ill became Edmund, save when it came to things that concerned his sister; then, he found, issuing commands suddenly became a matter of some ease.

"This is good news," Magnus decided, and with the very barest of nods he excused himself to all present.

"Less than a month," Edmund repeated. He tried not to stare at his sister, since he knew all too well she would tell him to stop; that she would tell him he could not prevent her falling ill simply by watching her. "Less than a month . . . please let it be a short one!"

O0O0O0O

Months, of course, are never really short or long; they are simply months, and they only feel as though they pass quickly or slowly. In this case, whether the month passed quickly or slowly depended entirely on who you were.

For Edmund it seemed an interminable thing, this month. The days could not bring themselves to a close, the hours crawled on as though weighted by a thousand stones and the minutes could not have passed at a more treacly-slow pace had they been engineered so to do. For Edmund, the month might as well have been a year, so impossibly, infuriatingly long did it seem.

For Susan, it was as though a dream had taken hold of her and the month itself was beyond her understanding. Time does not exist when one is so consumed by a task, and so it was for the Queen. She folded bandages, she carried water, she did whatever she was told she needed to do. She took orders from the physic with a grace and humility that I do not think another girl her age and in her position could have carried off so well had she spent a lifetime preparing for the task, and so did several other ladies who had been accustomed to privilege for a much longer period of time than Susan.

Later, when Lucy asked her what it had been like, Susan found she could almost not even put a name to it.

"It was as though my hands did what they could in spite of my being attached to them," she explained. "It was as though my feet carried me where I was needed even when I did not know where I was going. I was so tired I thought I might die, sometimes, but then I thought oh! if I lie down, what will become of them? They are so much worse off than I. And so in the end it was almost as though I laid down and slept inside me while at the same time I watched myself do everything that needed to be done. And, when it was finally done . . . I went to bed."

This last part, however, was not exactly true. In truth Susan had swayed a little, and her knees had gone out from under her so swiftly that she nearly struck the ground. Only by virtue of being on hand did Na'mia and an Archenlandish lady named Sally catch her between them. The physic had been summoned straightaway; he looked at the Queen and pronounced her not ill, but simply exhausted, and ordered that she be carried to bed.

And so Susan spent the final days of the fever's reign in the castle at Anvard tucked up safely in her own room, with spring unfurling pink blooms outside her window and Lobie mounting guard at the foot of her bed. He had his orders from Edmund, and the hound, though scrupulously polite about it, carried them through to the letter. None were permitted to approach the Narnian Queen save her attendants, the physic, and the King himself.

"You're an awful hard-headed girl sometimes, Su," Edmund whispered. He was hunched over in a chair that had been pulled up for his use. He tucked his legs up under his chin, and had Susan been awake to see him she might have been surprised to see how gangly the boy was getting. His knees were in far greater prominence than they had been some months before, and his elbows, too, had taken on a bit of presence; indeed Edmund had gotten, in general, rather long. He still managed to fit the chair, though, and as Lobie napped at Susan's feet and Susan slept the sleep of the completely worn out, Edmund talked to her.

He scolded her, praised her, reproached her and implored her. He said he would give her the world, if only she would consent to awake; if only she would avoid taking sick herself. He warned her, too, that if she ever made him so sick with worry again, he would lock her in a tiny room until she came to her senses. If she ever took it into her head to be so foolish, so self-sacrificing, so serving . . . so utterly, entirely a Queen . . .

He choked a little, then, and pressed his face to his knees.

Even though she did not know he was in the room, Edmund didn't want his sister to see him cry.

O0O0O0O

Susan awoke in the early hours of the dawn to find a soft, velvety muzzle resting in the palm of her hand. Lobie's breath stirred his whiskers, tickling the girl and making her smile sleepily up into the depths of the canopy over her head. Then she turned her head and saw her brother beside her. Edmund was sprawled half-in, half-out of a large chair, snoring gently. He was dribbling just a little. Susan's smile widened, and softened.

"Edmund," she said quietly. Edmund did not stir. Susan cleared her throat, and raised her voice. "Edmund?"

He jerked, then, and twitched, and sat up rather too quickly for having spent the whole night in a chair not meant to be slept in.

"Oh— ow!" he touched the back of his neck. Susan's smile was nearly a laugh, but a kind one. Then Edmund saw her, and saw that she was awake, and he forgot how stiff his neck was and how his back felt as though a particularly nasty Giant had been plying sticks all up and down his spine.

"Su," he sat forward, "Su, oh, you're all right . . ."

"Of course I am," she sighed, and settled a little deeper into the softness of the bed. Lobie stirred happily in a deep-dreaming way, and stretched beside her. The Queen petted his head, and even dared to run her fingers along the exquisite satin of his lovely brown ears. "I'm perfectly fine, Edmund. Why are you so surprised?"

"Because I . . . well, I thought . . ."

"Edmund," Susan looked at her brother with that sort of fond pity which only an elder sister can truly manage to convey, "did you really think I might die?"

"I was scared you _might_, yes, Susan; you needn't pretend it wasn't a risk, you know." Irritation momentarily overtook concern.

"But it wasn't really, I don't think," Susan said. She frowned a little, reflecting. "Maybe someday it will be, but . . . it's too new, yet. _We're_ too new. We've only just begun here, don't you see? What we're meant to do . . . it will take some time, yet. And naturally," she looked at him with an expression of such serenity that Edmund suddenly wondered how he could have been frightened at all, "we shall all need to be around to see it accomplished."

And the way she said it was so certain, so resolute, that Edmund couldn't see there was anything else for it but to turn the conversation to happier things for the rest of the morning.

O0O0O0O

"You're quite sure about this?" Edmund wanted to know. Susan, in the middle of settling herself more comfortably on Norry's back, looked down at her brother in fond exasperation.

"Edmund, it was you who spent all this time urging me to leave! And now here I am, about to do as you ask, and you want to know if I am sure?"

"Well, the quarantine's over, you know," Edmund pointed out. "The physic is quite sure that the worst —all of it, really— has passed, and . . . well, why shouldn't you stay?"

"I shouldn't stay," said Susan, "because we have things at home that want seeing to, too, you know! I won't be so very long, Edmund; a few days at most, and I will come back again. I only want to see Mrs Clogg about a few things, and look in on some of the Beasts we have left there, and perhaps see if I can't send a message to Peter and Lucy somehow; possibly by Raven. I know King Lune said we might use one of his messengers, but I think a Raven would get the thing done much faster. Please," she smiled at her brother, "you _must_ stop worrying!"

"Would that I could," Edmund scowled. "But it seems we aren't ever to be happy unless one of us is consumed with concern for the other, so I expect I shall have to deal with this as best I can. Lobie," sternly, to the dog who danced impatiently at Norry's side, "I can count on you, can't I? You'll be travelling in company, of course, but . . . I charge you particularly to keep an eye out for her."

Lobie made his earnest assurances that he would do so. Then Susan made another good-bye to her brother, and Edmund made dreadful faces at the thought of her leaving, and in all they made a very quaint little party in the courtyard until at last Susan touched her heels to Norry's sides and Norry, who had been pent up for far too long, in her estimation, sprang smartly forward and had soon put the courtyard and the castle around it far behind them.

They made splendid time indeed, and were all but out of sight of the castle, on the verge of topping the hill that would put it completely beyond view, when suddenly Lobie skidded to a halt and lifted his nose to the air.

"Smoke," he said, and was clearly so baffled by the scent that he did not even bother to bay it, as he would normally have done.

"Smoke?" Susan frowned. "Well, that's nothing strange. Whyever shouldn't there be—" but then she understood and, with a gasp, twisted around in her saddle to see for herself.

Sure enough, a column of thick green smoke was rising once more from the parapet of the castle, where there had been no smoke in evidence for nearly three days now.

Someone else had fallen ill.

"We must go back," Susan heard herself say. Her little entourage —consisting of Pollus, two Cats and Lobie— all shifted uneasily, but Susan simply shook her head and repeated the decision.

This was good enough for Lobie, who wheeled about obediently and set off in the direction of the castle once more. Susan sent Norry flying along in his wake, which left Pollus and the Cats little choice but to follow suit.

As they coursed back down the hill and across the plain toward the castle, Susan thought it strange that only now did she finally feel afraid.

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** I am well aware that this is a far shorter chapter than a four-month wait warrants, but if it is any consolation there is another chapter that will be posted in a few days' time. If that is no consolation, I am also working on another Narnia piece that may or may not be a few chapters long, and if even _that_ is no consolation, then . . . well I really cannot help you. Maybe have a sweet?

Up next: Grey Dawn, wherein Susan finds an example to follow, and in which there is mourning, and hope.


	16. Grey Dawn

Grey Dawn

O0O0O0O

Susan's travelling party returned to an empty courtyard. There was not even a groom on hand to tend to Norry, who was by this point quite slick and shining with sweat and blowing heavily in pleased, noisy fatigue— it had really been quite some time since she had been granted such a run. Susan of course would never have left her mare in such a state, but Pollus took Norry's head and assured the Queen that he would see her settled comfortably, should Susan wish to proceed directly inside.

Susan was too winded from the desperate pace she had set to do much more than nod her thanks, but Pollus did not mistake silence for ingratitude— the Queen's relief was writ plainly on her face.

With Lobie at her side and the Cats stalking purposefully at her heels, Susan hurried into the castle and tried to find somebody who could tell her what had happened. Once she heard the news, however, she wanted nothing more than to somehow un-hear it— or better yet, make it untrue.

"Oh, your Majesty," the footman she found, cornered and questioned stared at her in great distress. "Oh, your Majesty, it's the Queen."

Had Susan heard this even one month earlier, it is possible she might not have been at all confused. Indeed for most of the time she had been in Archenland, there had been to Susan's mind only one Queen there, whereas Susan herself (Susan had felt) was some sort of pretender whom everyone was kind enough to address as "your Majesty" even though she wasn't. But something about spending so much time in service to those who looked to her to lead them had taken their toll on the girl. She was at that moment wholly a Queen, and for that one moment could not understand what the footman meant.

"I— the Queen?" she echoed. A single furrow on her brow belied her confusion. "The—" and then she understood, and her eyes grew wide. "Oh! no," she cried. And without another word to the poor footman she turned on her heel, spinning around with such speed that she nearly tripped over Lobie, who only just got himself out of the way in time. The Cats were a bit quicker, already braced against the walls of the corridor to permit their sovereign passage before they fell in step behind her once more.

Susan did not falter but made straight for the stairwell. She ran the stumbling, clumsy run of the truly frightened, and it is probably a good thing that she had Lobie and the Cats so close to hand, for more than once did one of them find it necessary to dart forward just in time to save the girl dashing her elbow or knee against an outlying wall. When at last they reached the archway that led to the private apartments of the Royal family, Susan was taken all over with violent trembling as she fought to catch her breath.

"Queen Susan!" one of the guards forgot himself enough to step forward and offer a steadying hand. The Cats' whiskers twitched at the sight and Lobie watched this exchange narrowly, with the faintest suggestion of a wrinkle appearing between his eyes and along his muzzle, but the Beasts made no actual move to stop it. They, too, were winded, and were grateful to have another helper ready to lend Susan aid.

"I'm— thank you," Susan said, and managed to stand straight again. "Thank you."

The guard watched Susan with concern. "Shall I send for someone, Ma'am?" he asked. "King Edmund, maybe? Or is it a lady you'd be wanting?"

Susan, after flinching at the thought of Edmund's reaction to her endeavouring to enter yet another sickroom, managed to shake her head and find breath enough to make her reply.

"No, thank you. I'm merely a little winded. Only—" she swallowed and looked up at the guard with such fear that the poor young man felt rather panicked himself. "Only tell me, please— is it true? That her Majesty has . . ."

The guard (whose name I may as well tell you was Albert) grew solemn, and inclined his head. "Took sudden this morning, she was," he said quietly. "Come over all queer just after breakfast, and the physic was brought right in to see her. She's in a mortal bad way, or so they say."

Susan's stomach did a nasty, clenching thing and she wished there was somewhere handy to sit; suddenly, the act of standing seemed like just too much to contend with.

"I don't suppose . . . is she receiving anyone? Is she able? Could I . . ?"

"I couldn't say, Ma'am," Albert admitted. "She has her ladies, naturally, and his Majesty —King Lune, that is— is in a right state."

"Yes, I would imagine." Susan stood, twisting her hands and trying to know what was best. She knew the approximate stages of the fever as well as anyone in the castle. She had been on hand to witness them, after all, and to hear that Queen Lora had been so swiftly found to be in a "mortal bad way" was grimly telling. Of course, the Queen had already been sorely deprived of sleep. She had kept a constant vigil by Corin's bed as the boy lay ill, and even once he had recovered she refused to be drawn from his room. In such a wearied, weakened state, it was perhaps only to be expected that she would have been claimed by the sickness at such speed.

Yet knowing this, Susan found, gave her cold comfort. For what possible good was knowing a thing if it couldn't help you fix what you knew? And Susan found she would have given almost anything if only it would mean that she might fix this.

"Could you please get word to her?" Susan wondered. "Could you please tell her that if she has any need of me, for anything, that I am quite pleased to help?"

Even as she spoke the words, Susan hated them. They were weak and small; she felt they were almost an insult to the gaping wound that seemed to gnaw at her heart, that wound which she sought to ease by speaking such tiny, silly words. Yet at least, she told herself, these were better than no words at all.

Albert, of course, promised that the message would be delivered directly, and Susan murmured her thanks.

"Now surely, Ma'am, I can get somebody to come for you?" Albert asked hopefully.

Had Susan been able to see herself as he saw her in that moment, so pale and thin and worn down by weeks of caring and cares, she would not have wondered at Albert's concern. Indeed, to look at her it seemed as though the young Queen herself must give out at any moment. Yet Susan's spine was as steel, and I think it must have been this trait which kept her standing so straight as she answered him.

"No, thank you; I am quite well."

And then, hating the pain that burned within her, that fear for the woman she counted as a friend, Susan turned from the guarded archway and fled down the corridor. The Cats and Lobie kept pace easily as Susan found her way back to her room, but only Lobie followed her inside; the Cats, of one accord, took up posts outside the Queen's door as Susan and the now silent Talking Dog went inside. Lobie settled himself inside the door, but Susan flung herself facedown on her bed, burying her head in the pillow and giving way to wrenching sobs.

O0O0O0O

Edmund, rather surprisingly, did not learn that Susan had returned to the castle until he actually passed her doorway and saw the Cats sitting outside. They were tall and straight, and sat so nearly-still that they almost looked more like statues than Beasts, except for the fact that their fur —had you been so foolhardy as to stretch out a hand and touch them without permission and lengthy prior acquaintance— was soft and warm to the touch, and the muscles beneath their hides were taut and sinewy. Their tails, too, did not lie in perfect repose, but rather seemed to twitch of their own accord; in fact they did so just as Edmund came within sight of them, and stopped to stare in surprise.

"I— why, it's Vraia, isn't it?" he said. "Vraia and Hiram?"

It was indeed Vraia and Hiram, and Vraia the Panther spoke for both, confirming their identity. She also unbent so far as to explain why she and Hiram were stationed there, which led to Edmund's knocking on the door with increasing urgency until at last Susan opened it and stood before him.

Anyone looking at her could have seen that Susan had been crying, but Edmund didn't remark on that. Instead he only regarded her with open concern and asked if she could do with some company.

"Yes," said Susan, and let him in.

Lobie looked up from his place before the cold hearth, and his tail whipped the rushes once in pleased recognition. "So you have joined us, Sire!" he observed. "Good, good!" For anticipatory grief is not a trait of hounds, Talking or otherwise.

Susan even managed to smile at the dog's cheery welcome, though the smile left her quickly in favour of regarding Edmund with a sort of helplessness that the young king found painful to witness.

"Apparently it's very bad," she whispered, and Edmund could only nod. "Is it— have you heard anything? He says she collapsed just after breakfast . . ."

"Yes. And it's not only the fever that's made it so bad, Susan, it's her fatigue and . . . and they are saying it will likely be very quick."

Susan sat down hard. It is a fortunate thing that there was a chair behind her, for I think she would have done it no matter what, and she did not need to sit down hard on the floor on top of everything else.

"Quick," she repeated, ever-so-faintly. She stared at the wall but did not actually see it. "How quick?"

"They think . . . maybe tomorrow." He couldn't lie to her, but at the cry that tore from her then, Edmund wished with all his heart that he might. "Susan— Susan, I'm so sorry."

"It's wrong," Susan whispered. She wrapped her arms around herself, and this action caused the sleeves of her travelling gown to rise up in a manner they had not done just a few short months before, when first the gown had been fitted. The chill that kissed her wrists made her shiver harder. "It's so wrong, it shouldn't have been like this . . ."

"Shouldn't it?" Something in Edmund's voice made Susan raise her head to meet his gaze. "Susan, didn't you just get done telling me that there wasn't much going on here that wasn't meant to be? I don't mean to say I agree with you, exactly, but . . . well surely you don't think she's caught this instead of somebody else who should have done, or some rot like that, do you?"

"_No_ . . . no, I don't even know what I think, really, Edmund; I'm not sure I am thinking at all. It's only that I don't _want_ it to be like this." She looked up at him in desperation. "She's my friend."

Even as she said it, she knew how childish it sounded; fevers, after all, do not care if somebody is a friend or not. She almost scorned herself for saying such a thing, yet she could not help herself. Fortunately, Edmund didn't seem to hold it against her. Instead he pulled the bench out from Susan's vanity and sat down across from her. They didn't speak —Susan was too distraught— but they sat there, silent together, and Edmund did not leave until the sun went down and it was time to dress for bed.

O0O0O0O

Unlike Lucy, who had found the assisted bathing and dressing ritual rather awkward and embarrassing, Susan had come to view it as a relaxing thing, a time for contemplation when nothing much was expected of her save comparative stillness and the occasional turn of her head. She had not brought her attendant from Narnia, but Queen Lora had generously appointed a girl to that post who came faithfully each morning and night to perform the tasks required of her. Elia was only a very little older than Susan, and she had just come into the room that night —had not even had time to reach Susan's dressing table, in fact— when a knock sounded on the door.

Elia went to open it, and then turned to address the Queen.

"It's a footman, Ma'am," she announced. Susan, still fully dressed in her almost-outgrown travelling gown, her hair rather the worse for wear, betrayed surprise but nodded at Elia to admit him.

"Your Majesty," the footman said, "I come from her Majesty Queen Lora. She's not— that is, she knows it is late, and does not want you to mistake this for a summons, but she understands that you offered your company, and says, if you would be pleased to attend her this evening . . ."

"Of course." Susan was on her feet in a trice. "You needn't wait up, Elia," she added. "I don't know how long I'll be." Then she followed the footman out the door.

As Susan followed the footman toward the Royal apartments she wished that it were at all permissible to suggest that they run; their pace was steady but far slower than she cared for. The worst thing was that Edmund's words seemed to echo inside her head, that ominous prediction that the Queen was not expected to last beyond tomorrow; Susan found that as they walked, the fear began to build in her mind that Queen Lora would not even survive long enough for the younger Queen to reach her. It was a groundless fear, surely, but one which nevertheless occupied her mind for the entirety of the journey that she wished might not take so long.

When they did reach the Queen's chamber, the four guards at the door stood smartly to attention. Susan did not wait for the footman to announce her but rather took the ring herself, twisted it, and rushed in. Queen Lora, she saw at once, was still alive, and King Lune hovered at her hand. On seeing Susan enter, Lora turned her head and smiled a very small, tired smile.

"But here is our little cousin now, my dear," she told her husband. "You see, I told you I should not want for company."

"So you did," agreed the King. He did not, Susan saw, look at all jolly now; the smile on his face as he looked at his wife was a small, sad one, and even more weary than Lora's had been. But his eyes were as kind as ever, and when Lora looked back up at him the way in which they held one another's gaze was such that Susan, who had not been able to get there fast enough, suddenly felt that she should perhaps step back out into the corridor for a minute. But then Lora looked once more to her and beckoned the Queen forward.

"Wilt not reassure my husband, Cousin?" she asked softly. "I fear it has taken my every power of persuasion to obtain his consent to leave me for the slumber he so desperately requires. I do not believe I have wiles sufficient to effect his actual departure."

"I am afraid I have no wiles either," Susan said, "but— if it is any comfort to his Majesty, I assure you it is not my intent to leave your side until you command my own departure."

"Then, Husband," Lora caught Lune's hand in her own, "I give you my solemn vow that I will not command our guest's departure ere you return to take her place. Art satisfied?"

"I am," Lune murmured, and bowed very deeply to his wife. Then he bowed to Susan as well, and the young Queen, on seeing the expression on King Lune's face, felt suddenly very grown up and old, as though she now understood some elusive thing that she had not known before.

After the King had left the room Susan was offered the chair that had been his; she took it gladly, with a little sigh that did not escape Queen Lora's hearing.

"My dear," she said, "if you are too wearied—"

"Oh, no," Susan shook her head. "I confess to some slight fatigue, 'tis true, but nothing like what I have felt these weeks past."

"Yes," Lora smiled, "yes you have been quite tireless, I am told. The physic has spoken highly of your dedication— although I will own to noticing he was less complimentary of your common sense. Something about a swoon, I believe . . ?"

Susan blushed. "I had been standing a long time," she said, "and perhaps I had not eaten as much —or often— as I ought . . . and perhaps I had forgotten to sleep a while . . . but it was nothing, truly."

"My dear," Lora laughed —though a faint, whispery echo of her true laugh it was— and shook her head. "Oh, my dear, you need not excuse yourself to me. I am only grateful that your actions did not come to the same end that my own did. For, you see, it is rather a vexing thing to know that I will not be here for all the years I so laboured to restore to my son. It is enough to know he will have them, of course, but I will own that I am sorry I will not witness them."

"Oh . . ." Susan looked unhappily at the Queen. "Oh, but— but maybe you will not— that is, perhaps it will not end as you imagine?"

"I am afraid," said Lora, though she did not look afraid at all, "that there really isn't any 'perhaps' about it. It took a bit of bullying the physic, of course, but I finally persuaded him that I would make him a far more agreeable patient if I were told everything there was to know of my condition, and not kept in the dark about it all. He was most refreshingly honest with me thereafter— and I will confess," in tones of gentle reproof, "to disappointment at finding you otherwise, Susan. For if you have nursed as many as they say, there can be little mystery in this for you. Come, now, dear; tell me, do you think me very likely to last much beyond this night?"

Susan looked on the Queen and saw all the markers of the fever's progression: the sunken cheeks, the deadly pallor and —Susan's breath hitched in her throat— the bandages on both arms covering the long, blistering wheals that marked the patient as a dying one.

"No," she said, and looked down at her hands. "No, I don't." Then she fought the urge to hide her face from the sight of the dying Queen, who, for her part, was immediately contrite that she had pushed Susan to the admission.

"Susan," she said, and reached out to capture the girl's hand in her own, "Susan, I am sorry. I did not mean to distress you. I simply— well, I own that I have little patience with pretence, mannerly though it may be, and it is my hope that tonight I might persuade you to be frank with me. After all," her smile, though sad, was genuine, "if one cannot have the truth even on her last night in this world . . . why, then, it's a sad sort of world, isn't it?"

"I suppose so," Susan allowed. She even smiled a little, and Lora smiled back.

"There; that's much better. Now, enough with such solemnity. Why don't you tell me of your day? For surely," she smiled, "it is bound to have been more eventful than my own."

This, Susan owned, was very true; and so they talked of more diverting things than illness and death as the night wore on toward the dawn.

O0O0O0O

When Edmund took his leave of Susan, he found he was not quite ready to return to his own room and dress for bed. The knowledge that his sister was once again staying in a castle where an illness chose its victims without regard for their station or families or character upset him; it is, after all, a hard thing for people to know that sickness and death play no favourites. Susan, Edmund thought, was all sorts of wonderful things; she was kind and gentle, and only a very little bossy, but fevers do not care about such things. They do not care if they claim kings or paupers; they are not bothered if the next one they touch is alone in the world, or if it is someone who has a family and new kingdom to love her. Edmund greatly feared that Susan, who had these things and more, would not be spared infection.

The concern was such that it kept him from his room, drawing him instead down the stairs and out into a small side yard, lit at only one end by a few large torches set along the castle wall. For a minute Edmund fancied himself alone, but was disabused of the notion when he saw the targets set up down by the torches. They were three large hay bales, each with a hide tacked over one end and the targets themselves dyed on the hide. The man who faced these targets was almost entirely in shadow; only when he drew back his arm with the intent to loose a spear, rather than an arrow, did Edmund guess at his identity.

"Magnus," he said, and Magnus turned, spear still in hand. Backlit by the torches as he was, his face was cast in heavy shadow. Edmund could not tell if his own arrival in the courtyard was a welcome one or not from where Magnus stood, but boldly chose to assume the former, stepping closer.

"King Edmund." Magnus leaned lightly on his spear and watched the young King approach. "These are later hours than you usually keep, if I am not mistaken."

"Sleep," said Edmund, "is born of that luxury, an untroubled mind."

"There is something in that," Magnus allowed. "But surely it is rarely the province of a ruler to have an untroubled mind."

"Perhaps it is," Edmund said, "but I have not been a ruler long enough to know."

It was too dark to tell for sure, but Edmund thought Magnus may have smiled. If so, the smile was gone by the time Edmund drew abreast of the man and could actually read what little of his expression the torchlight revealed— and it wasn't all that much.

"I am unaccustomed to seeing you without your man," Edmund observed, "but this makes the second time in less than a week."

"Aye, he keeps company such as pleases him; his cousin may not be his favourite companion, but he is family all the same, and of course it is possible they will not see one another again for some time. I will confess, too, to enjoying the peace; I will even confess to shaming Fergus into leaving me to oblige his cousin. I welcome solitude, but do not often find it."

Edmund drew up a little. "If you would rather I not—"

"No." Magnus drew back his arm, adjusted his aim and loosed the spear at the target. Given the vagaries of the lighting, he struck surprisingly true. "No, as it happens I had hoped to confer with you."

"Well I'm pleased to oblige," Edmund said, and wondered why he should feel such surprise at learning Magnus wished to speak with him. "Is it—" he could think of nothing it might be. "What is it?"

"It's about the estate; Westford."

"Oh! What about it?"

"If my petition is successful, when do you expect that I might move my household into the manor?"

Edmund tried to recall exactly what manner of household Magnus had. As far as he could remember, there wasn't a very large one.

"I do not believe Westford is in very bad repair," he said cautiously. "If I am correct —and my sisters could better tell you if I am— then I would see nothing to recommend against your taking charge of it before snowfall."

Magnus said nothing right away; merely nodded, and walked over to the bale of hay where his spear was awaiting retrieval. After he had extracted the weapon from the bale, he studied it a minute in silence. At last, his gaze still fixed on the spear, he said "and if I were to renounce my claim on the land . . . what then? To whom would it be given?"

Edmund considered. "I couldn't say, right off. It— we don't even know yet who will be coming to Narnia. It may be that someone without land could do with— or maybe a household too large for the property granted to it . . . I don't know. We've only half gotten that far, really, and I shouldn't like to make a decision like that without the others present, or at least Susan, since she's the only one here right now. Except right now, she's . . . busy."

Magnus nodded and at last looked away from his spear to study the King. He was cast in sharp contrasts by the dancing flames of the torches— both light and shadow played across his face. Edmund, try though he might, could read nothing there; no indication of the man as he was, or what he thought, or anything. There was no indication of which direction his thoughts ran, and so his next words were particularly unexpected.

"It is a very fair-minded arrangement, your rule," he said. "Not much high handed about it, is there."

It wasn't anything like a question, but Edmund treated it as one anyway.

"I suppose it is fair-minded," he said. "At least, I hope it is; we mean for it to be. We talked about, we four . . . the sort of— of kingdom we hoped Narnia might be. We saw pretty much right off that it would take all four of us to make it so. We want to do it properly; we want to be faithful to discharge Aslan's trust in us."

"Ah yes," and again the lights made it almost impossible to read the man's face, "your Lion." He looked down at the spear again, as though checking to see if it had changed in the past few minutes. "A Narnian creature, is he? One of these great Cats that walk around conversing, such as are found in your company here?"

"Well— no, not exactly. That is, he _is_ a Lion, and he _does_ speak, but he's really not anything at all like the great Cats who came here with us. He's . . . I'm afraid I can't put it in a way that will explain him properly. He's something very Other. He's not Narnian, either; he's not anything in particular, as far as kingdoms go. He's not from a kingdom, I think; he's from somewhere very _much_ Other, you see, and not anything like is around here."

"So he is not actually from Narnia."

"No. Narnia is from him."

Magnus seemed, as near as Edmund could tell —which wasn't, admittedly, very near at all— to reflect on this information for a moment before speaking again.

"So it's not only in Narnia, then, that one can find this Lion."

"No," said Edmund, surprised. "No, I don't think so at all. Why?"

Magnus shrugged. "Call it a vested interest," he suggested. He strode back to Edmund's side and turned to face the bale once more. Edmund was conscious of more than slight irritation; the young King was far from the most forthcoming person, it is true, but Magnus's reticence put Edmund's to shame. It also annoyed him.

Kings, of course, have little business being annoyed in the common way of things, and Edmund knew this, so he tried to push his annoyance aside. He told himself that this was a chance to be diplomatic; he found the prospect about as exciting as any boy his age would do, but unlike most boys his age he had recently acquired a sense of responsibility to rival that of the most careworn man in the kingdom, and so he managed to strike a nice balance between grace and vexation.

"Very well," he said, and was relieved to hear that he did not sound sulky at all. "However, if you've no further need of my conversation, I think I may just . . ." and he nodded to the door through which he had first come.

"If it suits you," Magnus said. For a moment Edmund wondered if he ought to take offence at such a an abrupt dismissal, but a quick, sideways glance at the older man showed that he seemed to be more distracted than dismissive; he was staring at the bales with a sort of fixed, distant expression that suggested he wasn't even seeing what sat before him.

"Magnus," Edmund said, "if you have any more questions, I ask that you do me the favour of bringing them to me at once. If I cannot answer them, then I will find someone who can. I know it cannot be an easy thing, to contemplate making a home in a place you have hardly seen."

"No," Magnus looked down at the King, "but —an I am not mistaken, your Majesty— that is exactly what you and your family have done."

"Yes. It is." Edmund made a small, half-shrugging motion with his shoulders. "But I'm pretty sure that it's a different thing when Aslan gives your home to you; there is something almost . . . infallible about it, that way."

"Mm." Magnus nodded. His grip, Edmund noticed, seemed to tighten on the spear he held. "There is, I think, something in what you say." Then he turned back to the targets, and Edmund turned to the door that had let him into the yard in the first place, and both of them understood that, for now, there was nothing more to be said.

O0O0O0O

Susan, I may tell you now, got very tired that night. She had been tired for so long, you see, that a few nights' good sleep was not enough to stave off the weariness that must accompany the strain of sitting up the whole night with somebody whose side she would not dream of leaving. She tried very hard to hide from Queen Lora how weary she was, but I am afraid the good lady, though on her own deathbed, was not deceived. Not long after Susan had finished giving an account of her day, Queen Lora suggested that perhaps they might simply sit in silence for a time; she hoped the girl might at least nod off in the chair, but it was not to be. Susan's determination that the Queen not die alone kept her wide-eyed throughout the night, so that only Queen Lora occasionally nodded off, though she was usually jolted awake a few minutes later when the heat grew too much to bear.

Susan, for her part, did as she had done innumerable times over the past weeks; she wet linens to press to the woman's brow, she changed the bandages on her arms, and she sat, still and silent, at her side, in case she should have need of anything else. At last, as the stars began to fade and the night sky showed signs of lightening, Queen Lora realised that her guest simply would not sleep, and turned glittering eyes on the girl.

"I would speak with you," she said, "if it is agreeable . . ."

"Of course," Susan sat forward at once. "Of course it is."

Queen Lora nodded, and frowned a little, as if her thoughts had been disarranged by the very heat of her body.

"Susan," she said, and fell silent a very long moment. Susan had almost begun to fear the worst when her friend drew breath and went on, "Susan, I . . . don't expect anybody has mentioned my other son."

Whatever Susan had expected the woman to say, it was not this. "I—" she said, and blinked, "well, no."

Lora nodded. "They are too kind," she murmured, almost to herself. "I am afraid that his father and I could not bear to hear the Prince spoken of for any length of time after he was lost to us, and so although everyone knows of him, they behave as though they do not. Corin was the sole exception . . . it was only last spring, you see, that we lost his brother. 'Twas the reason I summoned Lune home from his visit to your kingdom; the abduction of our child, whom I had kept with me when Lune took Corin to Narnia. Corin, poor Corin, was dreadfully confused. He knew he had a brother, of course, and could not understand where he had gone. None of us could bear the mention of him, but Corin asked for his brother every night, until . . ." Lora shut her eyes, pained. "He woke from the fever and has not asked for his brother since. I think perhaps that some things, some memories, were obscured by the illness. At first I thought it a mercy, but now . . . I think perhaps we were wrong, to strive to forget so very much. But pain does strange things, you know, and this was what it did to us. We could not bear to speak his name . . . to hear it spoken . . . and so it is almost as though he never existed. I think we were not right to do this."

Susan could not think of anything to say. She sat, and stared, and wondered what had happened to this lost child.

"We trusted him . . ." Lora shook her head, struggling with grief. "We trusted him with our children. Do you know, the nursery was not always guarded; anyone could go in and see the boys. They were such a merry little pair, always smiling, people could not help but want to see them. They have such dear smiles, my sons. Such precious . . . they . . ." past and present were mingling in her head now. Lora was yet aware enough to realise it, but no longer strong enough to sort them from amongst each other.

"But then, one night, when Lune and Corin were away . . . I never told my husband what I believe. I don't even know it for a fact, I only suspect . . . of course, he had been such close friends with Bar, before that dreadful mess with the funds, and we _did_ know that, but we never thought that either of them would ever . . . oh! we were such fools, and it cost us almost everything, yet even so I cannot help but think it is better to have trusted and be proven wrong than it is never to trust at all." She looked at Susan then; hers was such a queer, hard, searching look in that moment that Susan felt a little alarmed. "I think you will learn this, too," she said, and paused a long moment to cough.

Susan held a cup of water for the Queen when the coughing was through, and Lora, wearied, settled back against her pillows.

"It was done so handily. That was the most frightening part of it, I think; that a child could be stolen from his bed while his nurses slept. Now we do not know what has become of him, if he yet lives or not. There was a battle, you see, we . . . we chased him. _They_ chased him, that is; I would have done, too —oh, how I wished I might— but of course there was Corin to think of, and I knew that if anything could be done, Lune might do it with as much determination as I. Do you know, only that once have I seen my husband in such a rage. He is not," this said with such tender fondness that Susan wished she might stop up her ears to save herself hearing the intimacy of it, "by nature an angry man."

"No," agreed Susan, who was quite pink.

"They gave chase . . . they took the ship, and Bar was yet on board, but our boy was not there. He is gone." Lora shook her head, bewildered. "He is not anywhere . . . and I am not entirely sure that soon I will not be anywhere, either."

"Oh!" Susan cried, "oh, but surely not. Surely soon you will be Somewhere. I don't know, exactly, but . . . don't you think . . ." she hesitated, trying to put into words what she believed, but did not understand. "Why should we be here at all, if there is not Somewhere for us to go next?"

Lora looked somewhat surprised to hear it put like this. She blinked a little, and then studied Susan with new appreciation visible even through the gleam of the fever in her eyes.

"Why indeed," she said, and smiled a little more. "Perhaps I should then say that I hope Cor is yet somewhere rather more accessible than the Somewhere to which I must go."

"Why, yes," Susan murmured, and caught the Queen's hand firmly in her own. "Yes, of course we will both hope that."

"And," Lora murmured, "Susan, if it is no imposition . . . perhaps, wherever Cor and I might be when this is done, you would be so good as to see to Corin, while you and he are yet here together? For his father has a Kingdom to worry him, and Corin . . . wants watching."

Corin did, indeed, want watching, and Susan's heart was pounding most dreadfully in her chest as she promised the Queen that she would watch him as closely and often as she possibly could. The vow seemed to settle Lora greatly, for at hearing it she settled back deeper into her pillows, and let her eyes fall shut.

Not much more conversation was exchanged between the two women that night. Lora was too tired, and Susan was too sad. The sky beyond the Queen's window grew ever lighter, the cool grey of a late spring's dawn brightening the darkened chamber until both Queens were lit in the gentle glow of not-quite-light. It was then that Lora once again opened her eyes, and looked at Susan in such a way that the young Queen knew what must happen.

Susan leaped to her feet, then, and ran for the door. She pulled it open and gave frantic, tearful orders for the guards to fetch the King, yet even as they took their heels and Susan returned to the bed, she felt that the King would not come in time. Queen Lora looked too far beyond pain for Susan to believe she would last much longer.

And so it proved. King Lune would not reach the chamber before his wife had left it, yet ere she did depart, Lora looked at Susan in such a way that caused the girl to bend forward and hear the soft whisper of the older woman.

"It is not only the life of my son," she breathed, "that I am sorry I shall not see." She studied Susan's face with a sort of knowing fondness. "You," she said, "will make a wonderful Queen, Susan. I have no doubt of it."

Susan would forget many things in years to come, but she would never forget the way a woman had once held her hand and, with the final breath in her body, voiced her confidence in a little girl who was not very sure of herself at all.

As last words went, they were well chosen ones indeed.

O0O0O0O

For all the many years that the Four were kings and queens in Narnia, it was not many times that Susan did something that was not exactly what she was supposed to do. In fact, these times numbered so few that most of them are lost forever to the recollection of most Narnian historians, and indeed, had not this one made such an impact on one person in particular I am sure it should have been forgotten, too.

They were all so busy mourning, you see, that they did not even notice Susan was not there; she had slipped away from the court as the sky lightened from grey to rosy gold, and made her way alone down a side passage until she came to a large door with guards posted outside. She found that these guards meant something much more to her now that she knew why they had first been posted there; she was not sure what she ought to say to them, and so was surprised when it did not prove necessary to say anything; they saw her, and knew her, and parted to admit her to the room. Grateful though Susan was to be granted such easy entrance, she resolved to find somebody to speak to about this laxness as soon as possible; she knew she could not allow the guards to trust anyone so much that they allowed the same thing to happen to Corin as had happened to his brother.

The heavy door opened noiselessly on iron hinges, and Susan stepped inside, closing the door behind her. It was a sunny room, decorated by a mother's loving hand. It had been a room meant to hold two little boys who were the very life and joy of their parents, but today it held only one. He knelt on the hearthrug and commanded a small army of assorted, well-battered, much-beloved little toys. Evidently these stalwart soldiers were under the command of Sir Longboots, and followed faithfully behind his horse Brownie. Susan stood against the door at her back, and smiled at the little boy. He frowned in deep focus, waving one soldier aloft and speaking what Susan assumed were the words of a very heated dialogue between that soldier and another, though she could not perfectly understand what was being said.

She might well have stood there all morning, the quiet, gentle little queen watching the Prince wage a war on his hearthrug, had Corin not turned to grab an errant toy and seen his silent guest.

"Queen Susan!" he leaped to his feet, delighted. "Queen Susan, did you know I had been very sick? They thought," proudly, "that I might die. But I didn't."

"No," Susan said, "didst not, indeed." She stepped closer now, drawing nearer to the little bundle of energy and vitality that stood before her, his feet braced apart on the rug, clearly ready to meet whatever adventure came next. Susan, in contrast, felt woefully unprepared; she was so tired, so _very_ tired, and she felt so much older than she really was, but he _needed_ her. True, he did not know that he needed her, but _she_ knew it, and she could bear to know it for both of them until he came to see it for himself— if even he ever did. "No, Corin, didst not. Art a most . . ." she faltered, remembering the look of hungry adoration in a dying mother's eyes. "Art a most determined boy," she finished softly. "Art beloved of thy father, and thy mother, too . . ."

Corin tipped his head to one side, as if attempting to discover what about Queen Susan seemed so different, today. When no answer presented itself to him, he dismissed the question as unworthy of his time and dropped to his knees again, surrounded by his makeshift army.

"Queen Susan," he said, "would you like to play at war with me?"

Susan, who was usually horrified at the very idea of war, even a play one, nodded solemnly. "I would be delighted," she said, and joined the Prince on the hearth rug. She was assigned a collection of archers who were, she was told, to be posted along one ridge in particular (the ridge being a bump in the rug) and were under strict orders not to loose their arrows until the crucial juncture.

"For you see," Corin said, "they must fight the evil prince and then they will find the magician, and Sir Longboots can kill the giant and have another adventure."

"Goodness," said Susan. "Well, we had best get started then; that seems an awful lot to get done in one day."

"It is," Corin agreed, "but if anybody can do it, Sir Longboots can."

"I do not doubt it," Susan assured him. "He seems a most valiant knight indeed. Well, then; archers at the ready, and awaiting orders, milord."

And so they played, the pair of them, a little girl being very grown up and a little boy who needed a mother but did not know it, as the sun rose outside the nursery window to find the world a somewhat sadder place than it had left it.

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** Bit down, this chapter, isn't it? I am sorry about that; I think the next one will be more on the cheerful side, if it's of any consolation! It does contain quite a number of hints at things to come, not just in this story but also in two others that I have planned for when this is done. Also, I'll shortly be posting the conclusion to "Water Witch" if any of you happen to be following that too. Meantime, thank you very much for your feedback on this piece and I do look forward to hearing what you thought of this latest instalment.

Up next: Heart's Ease, in which Peter and Lucy are tired and confused and diplomatic by turns, and sometimes even all at once.


	17. Heart's Ease

Heart's Ease

O0O0O0O

Lucy sat in front of her mirror and made faces.

"If her Majesty is not happy with the way I have done her hair," began a much-aggrieved attendant, brush in hand, and Lucy looked up in surprise.

"Oh! no," she said, "I'm sorry; I was only trying to see if I could cross my eyes and still see myself in the glass. I can't quite seem to manage it." She paused to take a look at the whole of herself, instead of just her eyes. "Oh, no, my hair is quite lovely; thank you," she added, and the attendant, mollified, said well, as long as her Majesty was happy . . .

Lucy, I am afraid, then made herself guilty of a slight falsehood. She assured the attendant that she was very happy indeed, and then turned her focus back to the mirror as the attendant —Lucy had been given a new one each night since they had arrived in Terebinthia, and the names swirled 'round in her head so dreadfully that she feared to add another to the mix— retreated to look through Lucy's gowns in a vain effort to find one that had not been worn at least once since their arrival; for it seemed that presentation was a very important thing, in Terebinthia.

And there, if you must know, was where Lucy's falsehood was born. For Lucy was not a person to concern herself overmuch with presentation, and she had found very quickly that the Terebinthians were greatly concerned with something that mattered very little to the young queen. When Lucy told the attendant she was very happy, it was not _exactly_ a lie, yet neither was it exactly the truth. From the first meeting of their council and the first appearance of the first claimant, Lucy had realised that here were people who greatly loved their fine things, and made very much a point of showing their fine things to any and all who might be interested.

Lucy, because she was a polite and friendly girl, and a queen besides, had made every effort to be diplomatic and cordially admiring of every fine thing that had been shown to her since their arrival. She found it rather a strain, though, because she was not the sort of child who can long keep up a pretence, and once Peridan had even dared to ask her if she was quite all right, when he caught the queen looking a little tired after hearing one of several petitions.

She had told him (quite truthfully) that she was only a little tired, and not entirely sure of some things, but expected that they would soon come clear enough. Peridan had not known Lucy well enough to doubt that this was the whole story, and in any event he would not have been so bold as to further question the Queen, and so the matter had been left as it was.

Yet Lucy, who would have much preferred to spend more time travelling to meet these claimants in their own homes, rather than receiving them in such rich and splendid state that it sometimes made her eyes hurt, almost wished that he might ask again, and again, until she could at last think of the right words to use when she explained that if she saw one more finely-wrought diadem, one more embroidered cape, one more jewelled slipper . . . well, she would not be held responsible for her actions.

These thoughts she mostly kept to herself, and considered such privacy an act of diplomacy in and of itself. She heard each petition as gravely as did her brother, and made little notes of her thoughts in a sort of private code she had been developing. It was nothing terribly elaborate, but certain symbols and letters had particular meaning to the young Queen, and she was secretly rather proud of the system; it made her feel a bit more grown up, and gave her something to focus on when the pomp and glitter of each claimant's court garb grew too much for her to bear.

So when Lucy told her attendant that night that she was quite happy it was not a lie, but neither was it the entire truth. She was not _unhappy_, but a few changes would need to take place before she could lay truthful claim to complete happiness. However that wasn't, she thought, anything with which she needed to burden the attendant, who had actually made quite a good job of her hair (even Susan, Lucy thought, could not have found fault with the flawless coronet of plaits and tiny, porcelain violets woven through each plait on a filament of gold wire) and was working diligently to piece together something unique and original from Lucy's supply of court finery, most of which was well on the way to being outgrown, and much of which had been already.

"You know, you don't need to worry about that," she told the attendant. "I can just wear something that I've already worn."

The attendant looked at Lucy in such a way that Lucy wondered if she could possibly have heard the assurance properly; the woman's was the sort of expression usually seen only on the face of a mother whose only child has grown up to prove a Great Disappointment.

"Your Majesty must wish to make a good showing tonight," the attendant said sternly, and Lucy, who did not actually care in the least if she made a good showing or not, could see that she and her helper were not going to sort out their differences in the half hour remaining until dinner, and so simply nodded, and said of course she did.

"I don't know what I can have been thinking to suggest otherwise," she sighed, and rested her chin in her hands, staring at the strange-looking little girl in her mirror as the attendant returned to the meagre offerings of Lucy's trunk (which Lucy had heretofore thought more than adequate for her purposes) and determined to piece together something magnificent.

"For," Lucy would tell Susan afterward, "apparently one must be very careful what one wears to eat a meal in Terebinthia."

O0O0O0O

Peter stole a sideways glance at his sister, and was pleased by what he saw. Lucy, sitting up quite straight in her chair (with a cushion beneath her, to give her the height needed to reach the table) was beaming at the man beside her. Prince Tyron seemed quite taken with the young queen; the pair were carrying on a highly animated conversation and showed every signs of continuing this for the foreseeable future. Peter, his mind set at ease, turned back to his plate.

The feast was a grand one indeed, with four elaborate courses behind them and three more yet to come. The Terebinthians evidently believed in entertaining in high style; every meal the Narnians had taken with them yet had been much like this one, and Peter was starting to find his doublets did not button quite as easily about the middle as they had once done. He resolved to pace himself for the rest of the meal— and then they brought out the salmon, and he thought perhaps he would pace himself _next_ time.

"How do you find the food, King Peter?" the woman on his left hand, Princess Ita, the wife of that same Prince Tyron who was so captivated by Lucy's chatter, was smiling at the young ruler in polite but genuine interest. Indeed, it seemed to be quite a knack the Terebinthians had for being cordial without ever slipping into outright familiarity; Peter had noticed it several times since they first came to the kingdom.

"Very well, thank you," he answered her. "It's something like artwork, I think; the way each dish is made and matched to the wines and how each course complements the dinner as a whole . . . are all Terebinthian banquets so grand as these we have had since our arrival?"

"Certainly," Princess Ita said, and then addressed herself briefly to the salmon before returning to the conversation. "After all, what good is a banquet hall if it is not used? And of what service would plain food be to such a banquet hall as this? And so, you see, every meal must be a grand one indeed."

The hall was indeed every bit as grand as the meal that was being served in it; Peter had been particularly struck by it their first night there, as had Lucy. They had walked in to the solemn too-root-too-roo of trumpets, and Lucy, walking on the arm of Prince Tyron (who had been forced to bend down quite far in order to offer it) had stopped suddenly at the sight of it. Peter had nearly stepped on the train of his sister's dress, and then he had seen the hall too, and they had both marvelled in such a manner that King Loriel and Queen Ursine, far from being irked that the visiting dignitaries were holding up the first course, were in fact much pleased and greatly flattered by the open admiration.

Now Peter found that the hall had not dulled in splendour since that first night, and as he ate he stole alternating glances at Lucy (who seemed to be getting on famously) and at the room around them. It was like nothing he had ever seen before. Certainly Cair Paravel had a fine banquet hall, quite in proportion to the rest of the grand castle, and Peter, when he thought of it —which he hadn't done, before tonight— found no real fault in it. Oh, to be sure, the Narnians had not actually used it more than once since the Long Winter had ended; they had opened it up to feast King Lune and his envoy, and that effort had been thwarted when a part of the wall gave 'way and narrowly missed landing in the soup vat. Susan had quickly adjourned the meal to the kitchens, where there was room for all and no walls waiting to fall, and they had not actually yet been back to the banquet hall to use it again. Even so; Peter felt quite comfortable in his belief that the hall in Cair Paravel was a splendid room in its own way (missing mortar work notwithstanding) and certainly more than adequate for their purposes.

This hall, however . . . Peter, chewing with deep appreciation on a mouthful of spiced salmon, decided that this hall had been _designed_ to impress. It was vast; far more so than the size of the Terebinthian court actually demanded. The tables, too, were massive (Lucy's cushion was the largest, certainly, but far from the only such placed on chairs around the room to elevate diners to a comfortable height) and the walls were hung with tapestries of such elaborate construction that even Peter, who really was not the sort of boy to notice things like embroidery, was fairly certain that these had required far more than the average skill of a weaver to construct.

He supposed that Princess Ita must be correct, that splendid food was demanded by the splendour of such a hall, and yet . . . it was the purpose in building such a hall that still eluded him. To be admired? Could such a purpose really be adequate for the many years of labour that must have gone into every aspect of the admittedly luxurious room? Peter couldn't grasp the mindset that must lie behind such a desire for admiration, but he supposed it was not the place of a visiting king to judge the ruler he had come to visit; he was there only to meet the monarchs who would be Narnia's neighbours and, hopefully, allies, and also to judge the petitions of those Terebinthians who wished to become Narnians.

This sorted to his satisfaction, Peter once more applied himself to the enjoyment of a meal that, even had it been served in quarters the size of the ship's galley on board the _Splendour Hyaline_, might very well still have been the best he had ever had in his life.

You could, he thought, forgive an awful lot for the sake of a meal like that.

O0O0O0O

"Well?"

Peter looked up from the elaborately-carved chair on which he sat. It was not much more comfortable than it looked; handsome furniture is not made comfortable simply by virtue of its fineness, after all, and so Peter welcomed the distraction provided by Lucy, who stood before him, already prepared for bed in her chemise and dressing gown, and repeated, "well?"

"Well what?" he wondered.

"Well, what do you think so far?" she wondered. "Goodness, Peter, I know I'm sitting in on these councils with you, now, but I don't think that means we no longer need to talk about them, does it?"

"No," Peter had to smile as he set aside the book of Terebinthian history he'd been struggling to read; Peter didn't much care for history books even at the best of times, and with a hard wooden chair beneath him, history became positively painful. "No, I don't suppose it does. Of what —or whom— did you particularly wish to speak?"

"All of it," Lucy said. Peter blinked.

"Then I'm going to need a softer chair."

"Very well," Lucy nodded to the chair beside her brother, "you may have my own. I think it's the only one that's at all softer than yours." For the chamber that Peter and Lucy had been given as their private sitting area in the castle of King Loriel was much nearer a council chamber in style than it was a parlour or salon; it had a high, arching ceiling, rich tapestries, costly rugs and only a very few pieces of furniture, all of them beautifully made but each less comfortable than the last.

"Oh no, Lucy, I'd not take your place," Peter protested, but Lucy shrugged off her brother's objections and said she considered it a lady's privilege to insist. Then she dragged Peter up from his chair, pushed him into the one she had used as her own since they had arrived, and busied herself rearranging a rug at Peter's feet so that it provided some cushioning against the stone floor.

"Now," she said, tucking her feet up under her skirt and settling onto the rug, "we can begin." And so very like that of a schoolmistress was Lucy's manner that Peter actually found himself sitting a little taller in the chair and attending closely.

"I think," said Lucy, "that I have never been so dreadfully confused in all my life." (Peter handsomely held off pointing out, quite truthfully, that Lucy undoubtedly had a good deal of life yet left to live before such a statement could carry greater impact) "Because do you know, they are very nice! They are sweet and kind people, if perhaps a trifle solemn, and I think that I like them all very much."

"Why should this be confusing?" Peter wondered, and Lucy sighed.

"Because I also think they are the most awful lot of show-offs I have ever met. I mean, my goodness, Peter! It's not only their banquet hall, you know; it's _everything_. Everything must be so grand and splendid. Even the stables are like something out of a fairy tale, you know."

Peter didn't know. "You've been to the stables?" he asked, and Lucy was surprised.

"Of course," she said. "Where else could I have gone to see the horses and meet the grooms?"

The way in which his sister said this was such that Peter had to smile. It was so very _Lucy_ a remark to make— not considering for even a moment that there might be no cause for a visiting queen to see horses and meet grooms. For Lucy was the sort of girl who considered every unknown person a friend she had yet to meet, and made rather a business of meeting as many of them as time would allow. And while Lucy enjoyed, to a reasonable degree, putting on the loveliest gowns in her trunks for dinner every night, she was not the sort of little girl who spent her every day dreaming of what she would wear that evening, which was why she and her attendants had all had such difficulty understanding one another. Peter could understand her frustration with the Terebinthian love of finery; he could also share it, especially after suffering on that dreadful, uncomfortable, beautiful chair for so long.

"So the stables are grand, are they?" he murmured, and Lucy nodded.

"Not that there's really any reason they shouldn't be," she added. "I don't mean that stables oughtn't be nice; at least they look after their horses, and they do it very well. Some people don't do that. And really, I suppose loving fine things and showing them off is at least much better than putting on a false show of humility and parading about in the plainest and most awful things one can find, simply to show off how little one cares about —well— showing off. At least the Terebinthians aren't hypocritical like that. I only mean . . . well, I suppose I wonder how anyone born and raised to the Terebinthian way of thinking and doing things might fit into Narnia. For we've nice things enough, but they certainly aren't nice things in the style of —well— _this_." Lucy looked around her at the room whose chairs were so fine and yet so painful that she preferred sitting on the floor to sitting in any of those seats available.

"No," Peter agreed, "they aren't." He considered his sister's dismay in a new light, now; he not only understood her concern, he also saw the truth of it. "You're worried they will be dismayed to reach Narnia and discover that the same value is not placed on having beautiful things?"

"That would be the better thing that could happen," Lucy said. "I'm more worried they will bring this love of costly things to Narnia and it will spread to their children and neighbours and tenants and so on until all anyone can think of isn't the harvest or the fishing or the people or even Aslan himself, but rather the size of their holdings, the proportions of their dining halls, coffers of jewellery and— and— _clothes_!"

Peter may have choked on a very small laugh just then, but he couldn't help himself; Lucy's expression was one of such unconcealed disgust. Lucy, at hearing the choke, had to smile too and admit that all right, perhaps a _little_ concern for clothing need not be outlawed in Narnia.

"But as long as they're wearing _something_," she said, "need they really care so much about _what_ they're wearing? Or how? It seems like an awful lot of time must be wasted on _what_ is done, and the _way_ it's done, and how it _looks_. Nobody really seems to be much concerned with _why_ it's done, and I think that why is usually the most important thing of all."

"I think you're probably right," Peter admitted. "But Lucy, I'm not certain that this concern —and I don't say it's not a valid one— is enough cause for us to keep people out of Narnia altogether. After all, people may change; people who come to Narnia are maybe even more likely to change than people usually are. Look at us, after all." For although neither of them could really remember how they had been before Narnia, both agreed that they had certainly changed.

"Yes . . . yes, I suppose that's true enough," Lucy conceded. "Only I think I'd feel much easier in my mind about all of them if I could just be a little better sure that— oh, I don't know." She propped her elbows on her knees and rested her chin in her hands. "If I knew —or even had good reason to believe— that the _why_ of it all is good; that they don't really care for what others think of them, or how fine they themselves must be, as much as I fear they do. Then, knowing that, I think I'd feel much better about all of them coming to Narnia."

"All of them?" Peter repeated. Lucy sat up, startled.

"Why— yes," she said, after a moment's reflection. "But how queer that is! I don't believe I've seen anything to recommend against any of them, save this matter of . . . presentation."

"This matter of presentation," Peter repeated, smiling. "Well, that is a fine and diplomatic way to put it, certainly. But— it's strange, your saying that. I'll admit I've been hard-pressed to find anything that might dissuade me from granting every petition made so far. Which, if we were to do so, would make Terebinthia the first kingdom we've visited where every claimant was approved."

Lucy and Peter considered this for a moment. It was Lucy who broke the silence, her face even graver and more thoughtful than it had been a minute before.

"That, if nothing else," she said, "should be reason enough for us to look deeper still. For if we are so taken with all of them, I think there must be something in this land that would be good to have in Narnia."

"I think you're right," Peter nodded, then shifted a little and winced as he slipped on the very thin, very lovely cushion on the chair. "Ouch," he said, and looked down at his sister's rug with such speculative envy that the little girl promptly scooted over to one side and patted the vacant space beside her.

"Come; sit," she instructed him. "It's actually quite comfortable down here; more so than up there, anyway! And bring your book, too, won't you? For I've a mind to beg you to read it to me. It looks interesting."

"I don't know about interesting," Peter said doubtfully, joining Lucy on the floor as requested. "It's pretty heavy on which treaty was signed by which seventy-four noblemen of little note and whose dowry was how many acres of land, and pretty light on sea battles and casks of jewels and rampaging monsters and the like. But it _is_ thorough," he concluded, and indeed, the book was an enormous one.

"Then what we must do," Lucy decided, cuddling in closer to Peter, "is when you get to a bit about a dowry or alliance, you will stop reading and we will make our own story about how it went wrong, and how there were dragons and villains and fearsome things that stole the bride away and she had to fight her way here and journey back home again through many perils and wonders. And," she added as an afterthought, "I believe there ought to be a jinn, too. Because a jinn makes _any_ story more interesting, you know."

This obscure literary rule had previously escaped Peter's notice, but on thinking the thing through he decided Lucy was quite right, and told her so.

"Although," he added, "after hearing your idea of a good history, I am pretty sure you will find the actual history terribly dull."

"Mm," Lucy sighed, and covered a small yawn. "Well, I don't mind so much if somebody _else's_ history is dull, I suppose; I am sure they found it very interesting when it was happening to them, or else they'd never have written it down. I only want to make certain that ours is anything _but_ dull."

"What," Peter said, amused, "you suggest that we nip into the past and rearrange matters to our liking?"

"No," Lucy made a quick little face at this bit of fraternal teasing. "Only that we make sure the history we are making right now is the sort anyone would like to read about."

Peter went quite still, then, and was very thoughtful. Lucy, he knew, did not realise what a knack she had for saying things that so alarmed and overwhelmed him, and he was certain he'd never tell her about it, because he had a feeling she would stop doing it once she knew. And Peter didn't want that.

"Are we making history, then, Lucy?" he asked softly. Lucy, curled up against him, a warm, soft weight of trust and adoration, nodded.

"Oh, yes," she said. "Yes, we're making history every minute, Peter; we all are. And don't worry," she added, looking up at him, "I am pretty sure that _our_ history will be _wonderful_."

Then she settled back in against him, and listened as Peter read aloud a much-altered version of Terebinthian history. Every rock that served as landmark in topographical mapping suddenly found it had a highwayman lurking behind it; every treaty signed was now threatened by grim treachery, and not a dowry was paid but that the bride-to-be suffered a most alarming series of abductions and adventures, from which each good lady at last emerged triumphant and (usually) returned home to wed her true love; only once did Lucy request an alternate ending, pleading fatigue with so many weddings, and so that particular heroine instead took command of the pirate ship onto which she had been kidnapped and became a merchant sailor, which twist in the tale Lucy pronounced far more satisfactory than half a dozen lovesick princes. Peter, on thinking it over, was inclined to agree.

"Do you know, Peter," Lucy told her brother that night, just after one thrilling tale of a swordfight enacted in the council chambers, "I think you're very _good_ at history."

"Only when I have you to write it with me," Peter decided, and pulled his sister a bit closer. "Now, we next must decide what is to be done with—" he checked the name— "Antonia of White Cliff, a lady of some modest property who is pledged to a young soldier called . . . something with a lot of Gs in it."

Lucy squinted at the name and made a face. "I don't care for him," she decided, "and I don't believe that she did, either." She pillowed her head on her brother's shoulder, her eyes drooping shut. "Make her turn into a mer-maid, Peter," she implored. "Make her turn into a mer-maid and have her travel the whole ocean over and see wonderful things."

Peter obeyed these instructions to the letter in his recounting of Antonia's altered history, and even grew so bold as to throw in a few embellishments of his own. I don't doubt that each of these little additions would have been very well received, but as it so happened, Lucy fell asleep before she got to hear all of them. When Peter reached the happy conclusion of the rather fantastical Tale of Antonia, he looked down to find Lucy slumbering peacefully on his shoulder.

Loathe to disturb the young queen, the king moved with exquisite care. He eased his whole self around so that Lucy lay snugly cradled in his arms, and only then did he rise (with some effort) to his feet. He had gained height and a very little breadth since first coming to Narnia, it was true, but Lucy had also gotten bigger, and Peter had to work to be equal to the task of lifting her. It is true that he could have called on any one of a number of attendants assigned to them for their stay in the castle, but when it came to looking after his family, Peter declined to delegate.

He held Lucy close to his chest, carrying her into the spacious, lovely room that had been given to her (the bed, Lucy had assured him, was far more comfortable than the chairs). It was into this bed that Peter laid her now, tucking the covers up under the girl's chin and looking, with a sort of fierce, aching pride, on the peaceful face of his little sister.

"We'll make it a good history, Lucy," he vowed. "The very best. I promise."

O0O0O0O

Lucy woke with a start some hours later in an empty room. Before she even had time to consider what might have jarred her awake, it came again— the terrifying roll of thunder that seemed to sound overhead and all around. Lightning was only moments away, and then the thunder sounded again— the storm was on top of them.

Lucy may have been a queen, but she was also a little girl yet. There is something about thunder that seems particularly alarming to some children, and Lucy was one of those children. This may or may not have had something to do with one time, quite long ago and a world away, when Edmund (before he had been quite such a nice brother as he had since become) had told her that the thunder was the sound of the sky shaking open to suck all the little girls up into the clouds. "Where," he had added, with a particularly fearsome expression, "they are eaten by GIANTS!" and at the word "giants" an especially dreadful roll of thunder had shaken the air and Lucy had screamed with all the undiluted terror that a four-year-old can muster.

Now, of course, Edmund was much nicer and Lucy was grown up enough to know that thunder is not really the sound of the sky opening to swallow up every little girl in the world, but she was still more than a little afraid at the sound of it, and so she leaped from her bed and flew out the door. She nearly smacked into a very startled Faun who had standing guard at her door, and spared him only a word of apology before she rushed on, down the hall to the door that led to Peter's room.

I am afraid that Lucy didn't even pause to knock; although I hate to report it of her (for Lucy really is a very well-mannered little girl, most times) she simply gave the door a great shove and ran into the room, not even pausing until she had leaped from the floor to land in Peter's bed. She very narrowly missed landing on Peter himself; as it was, the sudden jolt was more than enough to jar the young king awake, and he grabbed wildly for a sword that wasn't there before he was at last able to come to his senses enough to recognise the frightened little queen.

"Lucy?" he said, blinking into the gloom. He looked beyond Lucy to the door, where Lucy's guard was hovering in anxious concern. "Oh— that's all right, thank you; I've got her now." Then, as the door swung shut, he looked back to his sister. "Lucy, what _is_— oh." For he had at last registered the sound of thunder, the harsh brilliance of the lightning and the rain lashing the leaded-glass windowpanes. Peter knew how Lucy was in a storm.

"It's a bad one, I think," Lucy whispered. She was trying very hard to be grown up and a queen, but it was going badly just now. Peter, who had known Lucy long before she was a queen, pulled her close against him and told her that yes, it sounded bad, but it would stop sometime.

"They all stop eventually, Lu," he reminded her. The thunder rolled, and Lucy cringed closer. "They come for a bit, and then they pass, and we're all still here. But listen!" as the thunder rolled again (a very bad one it was, indeed) "d'you know what that sounds like to me? That sounds like nothing so much as somebody moving furniture."

The thought was a new one, and just intriguing enough to capture Lucy's imagination. "Furniture?"

"To be sure. Why," as the thunder sounded again, "what else could that sound be but a great wardrobe being dragged into place?"

Lucy, listening, had to giggle and agree that Peter had a point.

"And there," Peter went on, still listening, "I think somebody has dropped a whole trunk! A trunk full of silver plate and fine china. My word but that must have been a heavy trunk; listen, it's still rattling around."

Lucy's giggle was louder this time, and Peter searched his memory of things being moved in order to draw more laughter from her.

"Why," he said, at the next boom and crash, "that must be a mirror!"

"A whole _box_ of mirrors," Lucy decided, and Peter beamed down at his sister.

"A box of mirrors it was," he agreed. "And ho! what a sound _that_ made; what was that, I wonder?"

"I think it must have been . . . drums," Lucy grinned, and scooted down a little under the covers to listen for the next thunderclap.

"If those were drums, then this is the rest of the orchestra," Peter decided as this particular roll of thunder kept on for quite some time. "And look!" as lightning once more lit the room, casting every detail in sharp, bluish relief, "look, a searchlight! They must be looking for the musicians to go with all those instruments rattling around."

"That," said Lucy, at the next thunderclap, "must have been the musicians falling down the stairs."

"All of them at once," Peter agreed, and so it went, the pair of them cuddled down together as the storm raged on around them, each taking turns to name what thing must have been dropped or rolled or shaken to make such a ghastly racket across the winter sky.

In other rooms in that great castle it is quite possible that other children were frightened; it is possible that nurses and mamas were kept very busy that night, soothing little ones who could not find the courage needed to sleep. I do not know about them, so I cannot say. What I can say, though, is that in the bedroom of the young king of Narnia, a brother and sister were safe and warm, their hearts at rest and their heads bent together in shared merriment as they made a funny thing out of a fearful one and, as dawn grew closer and a dreadful storm moved on, they found sleep at last.

O0O0O0O

Lucy would always remember those days in the kingdom of Terebinthia. She would remember them for a hundred little reasons; the rich, lovely food they ate, the beautiful gowns she wore and the splendour of the castle, as well as the way she had Peter had curled up together to re-tell history and the way they had made a storm into a story worth telling. She would remember her exasperation only faintly, as a sort of foolish thing of her first childhood that she had outgrown and moved well beyond, and would indeed only recall it just well enough to make sure she did not fall prey to it again. More than anything else, though, that had happened in those days, she would remember what had happened the morning after the storm. The storm, you see, had been a very bad one indeed. It is often the way, when one lives on the water, that storms will sweep in with little warning and ravage the towns, leaving all manner of devastation in their wake, and such a storm had this one proved to be.

Lucy did not know, at first, that this storm had been one such; indeed she woke with a sort of sleepy gladness as pale winter sunshine spilled through the window and washed over the bed where Peter was curled protectively around his little sister, though he himself was still sound asleep. Lucy looked up into her brother's face with such fondness that, had Peter been awake to see it, he would almost certainly have been a little embarrassed; Peter sometimes got the feeling that Lucy thought he was a bit more wonderful than he really was, and the expression on her face at that moment would only have convinced him of it.

Peter, however, did not see Lucy's face, because he continued to sleep as Lucy wiggled gently away from her brother's arm and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her bare toes met the floor with a satisfying, soft little slap, and the cold flagstones chilled the little girl's feet in a thoroughly invigorating manner. Giggling, shivering and ready to meet the day, Lucy flew over to the window and tried to make out anything beyond the vaguest shapes through the cloudy leaded glass, and found she could not.

There remained then, she decided, nothing for it but to take herself straight back to her room, where she would change out of her chemise and into something rather more presentable for public consumption, and see what new, good things the day had to offer.

You may take it as a sign of how much Lucy had grown in the past months that not only did she change into a clean gown, she even took the time to comb out her hair and wash her face. Patting her cheeks dry with the linen cloth hanging beside the washbasin, she squinted into the mirror and decided that she was exactly as clean and presentable as she herself cared to be. That conclusion reached, she left her room to run down the corridor, down the stairs, and out into a small courtyard— where she stopped, quite still, and stared at what lay before her.

A tree was lying in the courtyard, where no tree had any right to be. Shards of brilliantly-coloured glass lay all around it, and Lucy could see at once that the tree had come in through what had once been a magnificent coloured-glass window that took up most of one of the courtyard walls. The splinters of once-beautiful chairs lay beneath the tree, and people in fine clothes had gathered round to work to chop and shift this intruding vandal.

"Oh . . ." said Lucy, and felt, quite suddenly, sad. The window had been truly lovely, featuring several clever woodland scenes that had captured the little girl's imagination, and she could not help but feel its loss.

"Queen Lucy." The deep voice at her elbow made the young queen leap and squeak and spin around. She looked up into the lined, bearded face of King Loriel, he with whom she had held only a few very brief conversations since her arrival.

"Your Majesty," he spoke with grave deference, "I am not certain your brother would approve of your presence here. There is a great deal of glass, and there are many splinters; your slippers would not prove much defence against these things. There is considerable damage to the rest of the castle, too; your rooms, I trust, sustained none of this?"

"Oh, no, thank you," Lucy shook her head, "they're quite all right, thank you, your Majesty."

"Then if you will permit me the liberty, Madam, I might ask your brother's trusted friend," he beckoned to Peridan, who was busy putting his back into the task of shifting an especially unwieldy branch, "to escort you to a place of greater security, until we can clear away the worst of the mess."

"Oh, but . . ." Lucy looked around, "can't I help?"

A lesser man might have smiled at this offer from a little girl whose head did not even reach his chin. King Loriel only shook his head.

"The offer is a generous one, Madam. However, I trust you will indulge me when I explain that my greatest comfort will come from knowing that our honoured guest is safe within her own quarters. I do not like to put a grim thought in your head, but 'tis true the gates were breached by the wind and some debris, and we are somewhat unsecured at this moment. If you have need of company, I believe that the workers can spare my wife for your convenience."

And Lucy saw that the Queen Ursine, too, was labouring with the courtiers to clean the grim mess that the storm had made.

"No," she said, "no, thank you, I am quite all right; I may go wake Peter, though, and tell him what has happened. If—" she hesitated, then looked up at her host beseechingly, "if I put on good shoes, heavy ones, and promise that I will do only as I am told, and not get in anybody's way— please mayn't I help? Your lovely home, it— it's quite . . . I should like to help fix it, if I might, and I think Peter would like to help as well."

At this King Loriel did smile, but it was not an indulgent smile nor even an amused one; it was a good, warm smile that curved into the depths of his long white beard. He bowed very deeply indeed to the earnest young queen before him.

"Madam," he said, "your concern honours us, and of course if you and King Peter wish to lend aid, we will not scorn it. Please, though, do not think that we are in mourning for what has been destroyed; why, after all, do you think we make such effort in building beauty into our home but to defy the ravages of these storms that must always come? Should you and your noble family grace us with your presence in a year's time, Queen Lucy, you will find our home more than restored; it will be brighter, better, more beautiful than ever. The ugliness of a storm, you see, must have the strength of beauty to counter it, or else I do not think we could recover so well as we do each time. We have many storms here; it is our way of life, and we understand that it is simply what comes of living in Terebinthia. You will find, though, that we have much beauty, too, and because of the storms we are better able to appreciate it than most."

Lucy, looking around again, could see that this was true. People who had feasted so finely the night before were today rolling up the sleeves of costly clothing and putting their backs into the task at hand. Queen Ursine oversaw some young men and women who wielded handsaws as they attacked the fallen tree; Lucy's attendant of the previous night was among them; so was Princess Ita. Prince Tyron wielded a sort of bristle-brushed broom with vigour, and several other courtiers were doing tasks that Lucy knew most high-born persons would have considered beneath them. She suspected that, if she had wanted to deny King Loriel's request and had she gone walking through the castle, she would have seen variations on this same theme repeated throughout; the hard work of people who loved beautiful things simply because they had seen the ugliest sort of things that nature had to offer, and so had determined to counter it in whatever way they could.

Her eyes shining and heart warmed, Lucy looked back to the king and swept a very fine curtsey in belated answer to his bow.

"I will go wake Peter," she promised, "and we will be back to help." Then she turned to beam a welcome at Peridan, who had been up for some hours and was by now quite sweaty from having worked so hard.

"It's not as bad as it looks, I think," Peridan tried to reassure her, as Lucy settled her little hand on his arm and let him escort her back up the stairs to her room. "The way they've been talking, it seems that this happens quite a bit around here."

"Yes," Lucy agreed, "King Loriel said as much, too; I'm not worried, though, Peridan. I'm actually quite happy. I learned something I'd been hoping to— but what's this?" she was genuinely surprised. "Why, Peridan; you're _smiling_!"

And so he was; the boy ducked his head, a little embarrassed, but the smile did not leave him.

"I suppose," Peridan said, "that there's something about helping a lot of other people do something worthwhile that just makes a person want to smile." He stood a little taller as he said this. "They thanked me," he said. "They said I was good at what I was doing."

Lucy squeezed Peridan's arm. "You will hear a lot more of that sort of thing in the years to come," she promised him. "I know it. You might as well start getting used to it now!"

Peridan's smile widened as he looked down at the Queen. "I look forward to it," he admitted, and then said, "oh, but isn't this your room, your Majesty?" as Lucy pulled him past the door where he had meant to stop.

"Yes, it is, but I don't need to see my room just yet; I need to tell Peter something, first."

And so Peridan found himself standing guard outside Peter's door along with those guards already posted there as Lucy returned once more to her brother's bedside, and spared a moment to smile fondly on the deeply-sleeping figure before she leaned in to shake him awake.

"Peter!" she said, as he blinked sleepily up at her, his golden-haired, sunny-smiled sister wreathed all around with the winter sunlight that was pouring in through the window, "oh, Peter, get up! The storm has ruined a lot of things, but we're going to help them fix it all, and oh, _Peter_," this said with something that was nothing less than a cry of pure joy, "I found it! It's all right, I found it— the thing I was looking for, that would make it fine for them to come home with us. Peter, I found the _why_. They can come home to Narnia! And do you know," she gave herself a little hug of delight, "I think that ours is going to be just the most _wonderful_ history in all the histories of this whole world!"

Any other brother might have told Lucy she was exaggerating; any other brother might have told Lucy to go away and let him alone to sleep some more. But not Peter. Peter sat up, smiled at Lucy, and said why, yes; he rather thought that she was right.

And then he got up, and Lucy put on good shoes while Peter got dressed, and then the King and Queen of Narnia (with Peridan close in step behind them) went downstairs to help tidy up.

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** I don't actually like salmon, so I found it surprisingly difficult to imagine Peter's enjoyment thereof. Fortunately that was the trickiest part of the whole chapter, so I hope the next one will prove as easy to write as this one, if not easier!

Also do watch for a new chapter of _Someone Else's Story_, due to be posted sometime within the next few days (my heretofore unstated goal was to aim for two new chapters, one from each story, to be posted sometime within the span of about ten days until each story was complete. Of course now that it's been stated it will probably fall to pieces. But I hope not)

Up next: Setting the Standard, in which letters are written.


	18. Setting the Standard

Setting the Standard

O0O0O0O

Dear Susan,

I know there are all sorts of particular ways that I am meant to address this, and I know it would be good practice for me to use them, but I find I can't be bothered with them right now and I hope you will keep reading it despite its lack of proper address because you love me, and I trust that you love a properly-addressed letter a little less than you love your sister.

I have actually written you a good number of improperly addressed letters, but you have not received any of them because I believe they are too personal to entrust to the vagaries of travel, and so I will keep them safe with me until I can give them to you myself and not risk them falling into any other hands. It's a queer thing though, as I have written you so very many letters these many months past that I feel you must already know every detail of our journey by rote. It is only when I dig deep into my trunk and come across the slippers in which I have hidden those unsent letters that I remember they have never been in your possession because we are so very far apart, and their contents so very personal, that I am sure the risk of them going astray is far greater than the reward of knowing you have read them and so are travelling along with us, after a fashion, each time you read of our journey.

I wish you were travelling with us. I wish that you and Edmund could both be here to meet all of these people. Some of them are dear and lovely and others are grumpy and unpleasant but I am sure all of them are good people in their own way. I think that if I had you here by my side I might not be so quick to grow cross and impatient with some of those we have met. I will not explain myself more clearly than this because Peter says that excessive candour in correspondence is a Diplomatic Incident waiting to happen (really, he has become very much the King since we've been gone. I think I should get cross with him if only he weren't such a good king. You will see what I mean soon enough, I am sure).

You will probably think ill of my penmanship. I know you were most particular about improving your own and I know you were after me to practice at it but it seems there is always something else to do other than perfect the upward curve of that most abominable 's' that looks nothing like I think a proper 's' ought. Do you know, I think we would be very well served to introduce a new style of handwriting in Narnia, one where the only rule is that one must not concern oneself with penmanship at all. We might even make it a capital offence if one were to be found practicing that infuriating upward loop— if, of course, we were the sort of kings and queens to make anything a capital offence, which I should hope we are not. Quite enough people have died already. But if anything should be sufficiently horrific to cause me to wish somebody hanged, I think it must surely be that confounded 's'.

I want so very much to tell you all that we have seen and done. I want to tell you of the families we have met, and all the wonderful people who will soon be coming home to Narnia. Not all of them will come right away, of course, for as you and I know there is so much yet to be done, but many, maybe even most, will be home before first snow this year, and the rest may make the journey next spring. Peter and I think that we will hear any appeals people wish to make against our ruling at the end of this summer, and if any are successful who knows but that we might bring home more families still.

Peter says I would bring them all home if he would only let me, but of course that is just his fun, for I quite understand that some people must be turned away. I hate to disappoint them though, for how dreadful it must be to be turned away from Narnia. Only imagine that it were you! I will have a very short temper, I think, with anybody who dares to look down on those who are turned away and I do not suggest that any brave my displeasure. I do hope you will not laugh that I say so, for do you know, I have found I have it in me to be quite fierce about some things. Peter has taken to calling me a Very Little Lioness and tweaking my nose or one of my curls as he says it, although again, of course, that is just his fun.

I do not know what you and Edmund can be doing just now. I have tried to imagine it and I have made Peter laugh with several of my imaginings, which I may tell you, in some confidence, was my truest aim all along— to make Peter laugh, that is. Maybe you will disagree with me when next you hear it for yourself, but I really do believe his laugh has changed. It is the most wonderful thing I have heard, all rich and warm and somehow very good. I told him once that this must be how a good king laughs, and of course he got rather red and uncomfortable and asked, very quietly, did I think him a good king, then? Which was foolish of him, wasn't it, for what else could I have meant?

Boys are such strange things, I think, if they cannot see when one thing is meant by another thing having been said— or perhaps that is just our own boys who are that way, and I am unfair to think that all must be just like our own. Only think, though, Susan, what a pity if must be if they are not! For I would gladly explain a hundred other meanings behind what is said if only I knew it meant that Peter would go on being so perfectly himself, and Edmund himself, and even you yourself, too— and, I think, me myself as well. For I think that I am perhaps not too bad a version of the things that I am, though I hope I am not too prideful for saying so (that is a new word I learned while away; prideful. A very disagreeable woman taught it to me, and I consider my careful learning and appreciation of the word my own revenge on her, though I hope I am not wrong to want revenge. If you met her you would certainly understand my wanting revenge, for she was so very much worse than prideful).

I hope you know that I love and miss you very much. I hope that Archenland is as good and lovely a place as we expected it would be, and that you are doing well in it. You may send any reply you have time to make by way of the Raven that brought you this (and brought Edmund his letter too, which I intend on writing directly I am done writing yours) for he knows where we are most likely to be found at whatever time he finds he may return to us.

Only think, Susan— we are so very nearly home!

With love always, your sister,

Lucy

O0O0O0O

Dear Edmund,

I hope you do not mind that I will not salute you properly in this; I did not do so to Susan, either, I am afraid. Also I hope you do not mind that I wrote Susan's letter first for it does not mean I care any less to write to you. I had actually thought to have Peter write to you for both of us, but Peter says he does not care to write anything just now (although he sends his love and all that) and has charged me to do so in his stead.

I am fairly sure you will not be even half interested in what I wish to say, because most of what I care to say is not what you would call very factual, but I will try to report everything properly and also to avoid what I think could be called unnecessary embellishments (only, of course, I would call them what makes a story worth telling in the first place, but there, I think, Susan and I would disagree).

We have met many people and I have told Susan, too, that most were wholly agreeable and of course I am trying very hard to like even the ones who were not agreeable, especially as some of them are going to come to live in Narnia, for an agreeable personality was not one of those requirements we listed for people to come live with us. I begin to wish that it had been, but I suppose it is too late to alter that now.

I promise I would report all that has taken place in as scrupulous detail as I could manage if only I could, but Peter says we must be very careful not to write down anything we would not care to have read later, and of course he is quite right. So I will tell you as much as I can and I hope you will not think too badly of me for making an incomplete report— although if you do think badly of me, I think we must discuss it when Peter and I come home because it really would be too bad of you to frown on something I can't really help.

The only very big and important thing I can think to tell you is that we have brought somebody back with us. He is called Peridan, and he is only a very little older than Peter and he killed a pirate to save my life even though Peter had locked him in the brig, and every time I remind Peridan of this heroism he turns a most fascinating colour. It is something like red, with a little blue around the edges, though not quite altogether purple.

I like Peridan very much, and not only because he saved my life. He is a very nice sort of person, and Peter says he must have a fine situation in Narnia because if Peridan can be so loyal to us when it comes to fighting pirates and saving Queens' lives (and here Peridan always goes that queer colour again) then surely the very least we can offer him is a bit of land and some tenants (who, Peter told me in confidence, so as not to turn Peridan entirely purple, will be the most fortunate tenants in all of Narnia to have as their Lord the sort of fellow who will defend the life of a girl whose brother shut him away in the brig. Of course Peter has made his own sort of apology for doing that, and I hope I am not so low as to remind him that I never wanted to lock Peridan up, but I will confess to you that I sometimes think it, and I hope you will not tell Peter so for I am afraid it would hurt his feelings).

Peridan is the only one we have actually brought back with us so far, and of course he is one more than we even planned that we should bring back with us this first voyage, but I am glad he is with us. He likes it very much when I tell him of Narnia and how the Beasts are all so wonderful and the Dwarfs are (mostly) wonderful too and the dryads and the naiads and maenads and just everything is almost impossibly perfect. He especially likes it when I try to explain how even when things aren't going quite as you meant them to it doesn't seem to matter as much as you think it should, because even the parts where things don't go right manage to go wrong in a very good way. Sometimes I think he is only listening to be polite, but then I see his face and how it seems to get much brighter and happier at what I have to say, and of course Narnia is the sort of thing that one gets rather bright and happy and homesick over, isn't it?

Sometimes, especially when I see Peridan's face as I describe it to him, I am almost afraid that I have imagined how wonderful it all really is. It is the same way with Aslan; when I go very long in between seeing him I almost start to think that I have made it all up in my own mind, how truly marvellous he is. And then I see him again, or hear him, or even think that maybe I was listening at not quite the right time and so have missed him by only a moment, and I remember that it is all true after all— almost too wonderful to be believed, but true. And there, didn't I tell you that I should fail at giving a proper, factual account of everything? I am sure this is nothing like how you would prefer a report be made.

I miss Narnia very much right now. I think I must be strange to do so since we've hardly been there very long and have in fact been away from it for even longer than we have lived in it, but it already seems so much like home to me that I feel as though my whole heart wants to leap out of my body and pull me home, back to the Cair and the stables and Mrs Clogg and the dear little dormice in my room who have probably made a nest of my whole mattress by now. I don't mention how much I miss it all to Peter, because I think if he heard me say I longed to be home then he would fancy me unhappy to travel with him when I'm really not at all. We have seen the most impossible, wonderful things and have met so many people that already I am happy to think we can go back and see them all again soon.

Only first, before we go back, I want to be home. I want to be Just Us Four, private and safe and cosy, and I want us to be together and for one moment not be kings and queens and then I think it all would be right again (should I have written that? It's the sort of thing a really nasty, clever person might try to use as proof I had once abdicated my throne, only that is nonsense of course, and if a person were clever enough to do that he would be more than clever enough to realise I had done no such thing). Of course we might then plan all sorts of grand adventures after that, should we choose to, but only if we make sure to come home in between them and be Just Us again.

I have been having lots of adventures with Peter, so I have had some time to think about it and I think the thing that makes an adventure best worth having is that after it's all done, you've a wonderful home to return to and family who will be waiting there (or just returning there themselves) to welcome you. And isn't it especially perfect that that's just what we do have? Or that it's what we are trying to build, at least.

I hope the building part of things is going very well on your end, too, and I am sure you will report it in a much tidier and more factual way than I have managed to do. I promise that I will try very hard to appreciate it.

With very much love, your sister,

Lucy

O0O0O0O

Susan, by the gift of Aslan, by prescription, and by appointment, Queen of Narnia, Chatelaine of Cair Paravel, Overseer of the Western Wood, to Lucy, who is by the gift of Aslan, by prescription, by appointment and by birthright, Queen of Narnia, Lady of Cair Paravel, Protector of the Eastern Villages, and best-beloved sister: a thousand warm and tender greetings.

I promise you, dear, that I do not think ill of your penmanship. Nor do I think ill of your failure to salute me; indeed I was only so surprised and delighted to see your letter at all that I dropped everything that I held to snatch it from the poor, confused Raven who laboured so mightily to bring it so far. He accepted my apologies for my ill manners quite handsomely and I do not believe he thinks poorly of me, but perhaps you can see, now, how dear your words are to me— so dear that I do not care how they are begun, how they are styled or even what impulse provoked you to send a letter when so many, it seems, yet sit unsent in your trunk— (and why in your slippers, dear? You must tell me, when next I see you) indeed I care only that they were written by you for me, and that they were exactly what I needed most to see.

We have not been the happiest of company in recent months. You will of course have no way of knowing this, but there has been a terrible sickness here. I will certainly give any particulars that you might request of me but I am unequal to the task of volunteering them just yet. We lost so many people, you see, who were only just becoming friends to us that I find it is beyond my powers to make a proper report. Our good host is in mourning for his queen, and indeed, so am I; I had come to count her among my friends, and I will confess to you, Lucy, that a friend is a rare and precious thing during these days when you, my closest friend, are so far beyond the reach of my deepest confidences.

Edmund is still rather cross with me that I came back to the castle at all— I was meant to return to Narnia, you see (and had I done as I ought, I should have missed your letter entirely) but I found it necessary to return when I realised the illness had not yet run its course. Edmund cannot quite understand my reasoning here, and says that, although a degree of selflessness is to be expected in a ruler, he will not answer for the ferocity of his reaction should I persist in such reckless self sacrifice.

I am afraid that he and I cannot see eye to eye on this point, for of course I realise (in a way that Edmund will no doubt come to do quite soon) that I am not my own any longer; nor, dearly though I do love you all, am I Edmund's or Peter's or even yours. None of us, in fact, belong to ourselves any longer, for we are in the service of those who look to us to lead them.

I will confess to you that this was an unsettling thought when first it occurred to me, but thanks to circumstances as of late I have begun to make my peace with it. There is something, I have found, about somebody requiring all of one's time that teaches one very quickly how little of that time one truly needs to herself! You know of course, dear, that I am a private person, and I daresay I will find it a sore trial to become less so, but I am determined that this is what I must do, for it is no less than our subjects should expect from their queen. I hope, of course, that they will not find it necessary to knock down the gates of Cair Paravel at all hours of the night, but I hope too that they will know they could do, if only they had the need.

On the topic of our subjects, Edmund and I are making great progress in reviewing the requests of all claimants and we find that between us we are very near to making final decisions in all cases. He has made noble efforts to persuade me to lend myself to the task of the interviews as well, and of course I try to do as much as I can, but I cannot help thinking you would make a better showing at it than I. I much prefer to meet these people in other ways than the severe formality of a council-chamber, whereas Edmund seems to shine in such a setting. We have reached a compromise in how the decisions are to be made, with me reading the notes he has made and speaking with the claimants in other environs, and it seems to be working quite well, although as of late I have devoted myself chiefly to the parchment, finding I have little time left to conduct any sort of interview. My own time, you see (that time which is not really my own at all) has been greatly taken up by Prince Corin— you will remember him, surely? He is as dear and impossible a little boy as he was when first King Lune brought him to Narnia. There have been days when I thought I might throw him from the nursery window, if only I did not love him so much! When you come home at last, dear, you will understand what I mean.

I must confess to some curiosity over these good and trying people you mention. I doubt that my presence would have greatly improved matters for you, Lucy, though you are sweet to say so; I am sure you were as much a good and patient queen as anyone could have expected you to be, for of course it is not what you wished you might say to them that matters, but rather only what you did say to them. I suppose the woman who told you about being prideful would disagree with me, but I think we can agree between us that such a one as she will have little bearing on the manner in which we conduct ourselves and the way we rule our kingdom— only do remember to tell me, when at last we are Just Us once more, what can possibly have happened to incite such a lecture, for I should like very much, I think, to hear that particular tale.

I find I have not much else to tell you, though there is much I long to ask. Peter is quite right that we must be guarded in our communication, but I wish it were not so. I wish I might induce you to share each detail of your every trial and triumph so that I really might feel, if only for a moment, as though I were indeed your travelling companion. I feel I should caution you against harbouring any missives too revealing to post, for a trunk may be raided as easily as a letter stolen, but I cannot. I am too selfish. I desire too deeply the comfort of someday (some day very soon!) holding those letters in my own hands and learning from them every adventure you and Peter have shared since last we four were together (although I hope they are not too adventurous. Edmund and I read one another's letters, you know, and my goodness, Lucy. Were there truly pirates? It frightens me to think of it).

I will risk Peter's disapproval now and speak with as much candour as I dare in such a potentially public missive— I do miss you, Lucy. I think of you often and wonder what you and Peter must be doing, so far away and in such lands as I cannot even imagine. I hope there are not many pirates, of course, but I also labour even to imagine the places you have seen. What are they like, these islands you have visited? Are they temperate, or is the climate inhospitable? Are there mountains, deserts, valleys? For our part, the climate of Archenland is much like that of Narnia, though perhaps rather more temperate. After all, we are not so far from the south, and indeed we have only to look out certain windows in the castle here to see the great desert shimmering in the distance. They say that the heat at the heart of this wasteland is fierce indeed, and I confess to a longing, born of I know not what impulse, to see this wild, strange land to the South for myself.

The Calormene peoples who have come here are good and true, though their fierceness does take some getting used to; it took me quite some time to learn not to be so completely in awe of them, for there is something in their manner that is unlike anything I have seen. Now, though, I find that awe is tempered with respect, and more than once I have thought that I should like very much to see their homeland. I have listened to the Calormene ladies tell stories of the great capital, Tashbaan; two of them have seen it with their own eyes, and the third has seen paintings and read many tales of it herself. They have a wonderful way with a story, these women, and I find myself hanging on their every word.

A strange and wondrous city it sounds, when they speak of it— almost like something out of fairy stories. But then, isn't this life we have begun like something out of a fairy story, too? I have reached that point where I half expect that a jinn shall leap from the nearest lamp to offer me wishes, that point where I think I might even see a horde of brigands come thundering down the pass at Anvard to lay siege to the castle (though of course I hope they do not, for I think a siege must be a dreadfully uncomfortable thing to experience).

I think of you often when I take these flights of fancy. It seems that I am becoming more like you the less I have you around to be yourself. I do not say this is an unwelcome change; I only think that I am a poor substitute for the reality of you, dear. I fall short, you see, of knowing what wishes I would ask of the jinn, or what purpose the brigands would have in laying siege to such an unassuming castle as that of our dear host. You, I am sure, would be more than equal to the challenge of these imaginings and would have ready answers for these questions and more. I look forward to hearing them when we are together again.

I do not know how much longer you may be gone, nor how much longer we will find ourselves in this friendly kingdom. I am very much fond of Archenland and of our new friends here, but Lucy, I miss you. I miss you and Peter both, and I know that Edmund misses you too, though of course you know how Edmund is; he will not actually permit himself to say it. Therefore I must presume to say it for him; only please know that it is no less heartfelt on his part simply because he chooses not to say it— we long for you, and await the day when we can, as you say, sit together as Just Us Four (though you know, dear, it should really be "We Four") and have a moment in between adventures to be grateful that when all the pirates are gone and the plotting is behind us, we will be only us.

I hope I am not a poor queen to want these things. I certainly do not desire them more than I do the safety and security of our kingdom, and I hope that I am right to be so confident in saying I would never put my love of those three people dearest to me ahead of the needs of so many people who will soon look to all four of us for everything that they require. I think it is only the length of the separation that wears on me so; that, and the desire to know all that has happened to you and to share with you all that has come to pass with us since last we were together.

Until we are together again, Lucy (and I do so hope that it will be soon!) know how much I am thinking of you, and give my love to Peter as well.

With all my love, your sister,

Susan

O0O0O0O

Edmund, by gift, prescription, etc., to Peter, etc., greeting.

I'll tell you right off that Susan cut up pretty rough over those etceteras but I think we'll have enough time later to bother with the whole salutation thing. That's not to say I mind us being correct, since I don't, but I think that when it is (as Lucy put it) Just Us Four we might at least leave off being so proper.

I also wouldn't mind leaving off caution in favour of telling you everything that's been going on this year past. I sat down to make a sort of list the other day and if I hadn't been here to see it all myself, I'd think I was making it up. These are a rare sort of people, and I don't mind saying I'm proud to think I'll be their king (and on the subject of pride, I read Lucy's letter to Susan; where does Lucy get the time to speak with disagreeable women who tell her what it means to be prideful? I should thank you to keep her well clear of that sort. Lucy's too good to be brought down by the sort of hypocrites who make it a point of pride to be humble).

I don't mind telling you that when first we began all this, I was pretty sure I'd muff it somehow. You know I still find I am quick tempered and get pretty impatient at times. I am working on that, because that's not the sort of king I want to be, but it still shows up at the most inconvenient times. I'd first had a mind to ask Susan to sit in on all the council meetings and possibly keep a sharp pin or something like that at the ready, so that she could give me a good jab if ever my temper seemed disposed to get the better of me, but Susan declined the privilege— she's not much of one for a council meeting, she says, and I expect she's right, but it's meant I've been only my own self, though not my usual self. Rather, I have had to be a better version of myself, and I have found the whole experience pretty trying.

Maybe you can take to bringing a pin to council meetings when you return, or maybe Lucy will oblige me— I daresay she might even enjoy it, giving me a good stick when I start to get heated. I just know that if I've any hope of turning into the sort of king I plan to be some day — the sort of man I hope to become — I'm going to need a bit of help.

The people do help a good deal, of course. They're not so infuriating that I often need a pin-prick, and in fact they are all mostly keen on getting settled as soon as possible, and I am keen on seeing them settled. I think I will give the go-ahead for most of them to come back to Narnia before snowfall, so they can settle in for the winter. I find it's handy that the Archenlandish folk have some sort of working knowledge of the land, though I've had to set the record straight a time or two. Do you know they had got the idea from somewhere that the naiads were a sort of mer-people? I mean, in the technical sense you might say they are, but of course they aren't really mer-people at all, and I had to take great pains to explain the difference. They could hardly credit it when I told them the truth of the matter, but they took me at my word— a sobering thing, that. I hope I shall strive always to be as good as my word, of course, but that these people would take me at my word when they hardly know me; that they would put their trust in me by the weight of Aslan's appointment of me — of all of us — is a very grave thing. Of course, Aslan's word is always good, but to have my measure taken from the measure of Aslan himself is a bit unsettling.

There's something else I can't quite work out here. There's one claimant in particular I can't make out. You may trust that I am working to be patient with him, and more than once I've sought Susan's counsel on the matter, but she doesn't seem to find the situation as bothersome as I do so she can't really understand my frustration. It's not that I doubt the worth of this man's character or mistrust his intentions, it's only that I'd not mind seeing some eagerness on his part when it comes to speaking for what is meant to be his. Now, I don't expect him to go into raptures over it, or anything like. After all, the Calormenes play things pretty close to the chest as a rule. It's just that this chap takes it about ten leagues beyond guarded. He says he has come to make a home here, or at least, he has come to see if he might be allowed to make one. But even the other Calormenes betray their eagerness for the land from time to time in little ways that I have learned to read — a look, a word, a sigh; that sort of thing — whereas this fellow just goes about his business here as though he were waiting out an hour-glass.

I hope I will be fair in my ruling, when it comes time to make it. Susan says she does not think I have it in me to be unfair, but really that was the worst thing she could have said, for now I've the weight of her faith in me as well, and how am I supposed to carry that burden along with all the others? I don't want my frustration with this man's caginess to get the best of me, but am I so wrong to hope for some small expression of hope on his part, no matter how slight? I have other reasons beside his desire for a home to think he would make a fine Narnian, or else of course I'd not be so pulled over this. He saved Susan's life, you know, when a small party from the castle was attacked in the wood. Of course a lot of other nasty business came out of that, but Susan made it quite clear to me that if it weren't for this man and a few others, she'd never have come back from that ride (and what that news did to me I would wager only you can imagine).

Even leaving that out, he has given me many other reasons to view his claim favourably, so maybe you can understand why I'm so torn about this. I expect by the time you read this letter I will have already been pressed to making a decision, but somehow, even just putting it all down like this helps. Maybe there is something in that idea of Lucy's, writing out letters she never means to send. Perhaps it helps to clear the head. I still don't know what my decision will be, of course, but I think I may be able to see my way clear to making it, when the time comes.

Lucy also said you had elected to fetch somebody home as early as this first journey. I won't say I wasn't rather surprised to learn of it, but of course I know you'd not make any unwise decision (unless you count the decision to lock the fellow away when Lucy was so against it— she has forgiven you for that liberty already, I am sure, because she is that sort of person, but I would be surprised if she forgot it very quickly. D'you know, I wonder if you can be trusted to make many wise decisions on your own with only Lucy there to rein you in! I have long suspected that she thinks too well of you, sometimes). Have you some particular property in mind for this man? Lucy spoke as though you had determined to give him lands of some consequence, and so I could not help but wonder which you had thought to grant him.

It is a hard thing, this king business. One must always be thinking of everything all at once, and sometimes I am surprised to realise just how much I am able to think of at one time. I told Susan when first we got here that the whole thing seems like chess— you cannot safely think of only the move you are about to make, but rather you must think of every possible ramification that one action should, might not, likely would and never could have for years and years to come. What I found most shocking of all is how, even though it does give a fellow an awful headache at times, it's really sort of simple, too. That is, the doing of it is easy, but knowing what a solemn thing it is, how far it can all reach and how if it does go wrong, it's all on me— that's the hard part. It's the part that keeps me up some nights.

I've told Susan all of this, too, of course. She doesn't understand some of it, but she's been quite handsome about listening, and I try to show her the same courtesy in return. As we go over these things we are finding that we haven't really any of the same trials as each other, and you'd think that might cause a bit of discouragement, but if anything it seems to keep us pressing on. You see, we are finding that neither of us can quite take the place of the other. I know it sounds rather daft of me to say so, since whoever in his right mind would have thought that we could? But we don't seem to speak to people the same way; we don't seem even to see people the same way. Susan sees them one way, and I see them quite another. I don't think either of us has ever been wrong about a person, exactly, but we've only ever each been half-right. It's a sobering thing, and it's what has kept us moving along together. If I make a decision without her, chances are I have got it at least half wrong, and she has been good enough to say that she feels the same, so although we don't do many of the same things together, we've not made any actual grave decisions without first seeking the counsel of the other.

So we're an odd sort of king and queen, and I'm still not entirely sure what sort of king I am just yet, but I know that I am; that is, where before I felt sort of like an impostor, a cheeky kid just playing at a game that I hoped nobody would see through, I don't anymore. I may not be a particularly fine figure of a king just yet, but I am King, and Susan (though I've not yet dared to ask her if she actually feels it) is every inch a queen.

I don't know if you will think this letter too unguarded or not. If you do, we can sort all that out when you get back home; really it's a beastly insufficient thing, a letter. You can never get the tone just right. Hope you are keeping well, and all that.

Your brother,

Edmund

O0O0O0O

Peter, King of Narnia, to Edmund, King of same: greeting.

Yes, I suppose you might have something there, with that bit about us not needing to stand on ceremony in our private communications. There will be time enough to be proper when people are looking in; if we can't be ourselves when we're just ourselves together, there's something wrong in that.

I trust that the decision you spoke of, that one that you feared you would find so trying to make, has been resolved to the best of your considerable ability. I cannot see fit to counsel you on such a matter when I know nothing, myself, of the man in question, but I have faith that the man who is to be this claimant's judge, the king who must make this decision, will be as just as I know him to be. I know the choice that you and Susan agree upon will be sound, Edmund; I only hope that you may come to see this, too.

As to your gravest charge against me I must plead ignorance; I had no idea that a woman told Lucy about what it means to be prideful. You may be shocked, Brother, but our sister does have her secrets, even from me. I find, when I do hear of them, that they are usually those secrets which she suspects would upset me should I learn of them. Apparently she thinks me able to govern a kingdom, but not quite able to shoulder the burden of knowing that my sister has private difficulties of her own.

Perhaps she is right.

I confess I did not read Lucy's letters before she sent them, although she did offer that I might, so I am not certain what she has told you of our problems and our triumphs these months past. You may be assured we have met our share of both, and I can only trust in the wisdom of he who appointed us to rule that the triumphs will, if they do not outnumber the difficulties, at least prove equal to the task of outweighing them. I find myself looking ahead at the years to come, and find I cannot escape the belief that my crown will weigh most heavily on my head in the future if I do not make the best job I can of this first task.

We have, since Lucy last wrote to you, left our good hosts in Terebinthia and journeyed on to Galma. The Terebinthians saw us off with the warmest wishes for good weather, and King Loriel sent two fine, well-armed ships to flank us until we were clear of the coastline and so ran less risk of encountering another pirate ship.

I do not care to think of that pirate ship that did find us. I feel I must answer your charge of poor foresight on my part, to have incarcerated our friend Peridan against Lucy's wishes, but to do so is to revisit my recollection of that grim day, and I find it is almost more than I can stomach. Edmund, I think that only you and Susan would be in a position to know what it felt like when I saw Lucy as she was in that moment. I do not know how much she told you; I suspect she did not tell Susan anything close to the whole story, and quite right she was, too, for it is not the sort of story whose telling Susan welcomes. Suffice to say that one of the brutes who set on us had her in his possession, and I cannot answer for what I would have done, had Peridan not reached them first.

One of us would surely have died that day, had it not been for Peridan's intervention. Either Lucy would have met her end at the hands of the pirate, or, more likely, I should have done, fighting to spare her. Perhaps we might both have fallen; I do not think Lucy would have stood by to see me killed any more than I should have stood by to see her life lost. Peridan has more than acquitted himself in my eyes, and were the crown I wear my own to bestow on any man then I should give it to him gladly, with my deepest apologies that it is still far too paltry a gift for the man who saved the life of our sister.

Mistake me not, Peridan is no warrior; not by first nature, at least. He is at this time only a very lost and frightened young man, and perhaps with his consent I will one day share with you some of what he has confided in me concerning his early life. It is a grim sort of existence that he left behind him, a very bleak beginning indeed, but even so he demonstrated a valour that Narnia should be proud to see in her people. He has more than earned any lands that we are able to give him, and you are right, Brother, that I mean to make them fine ones. He will be a good steward of all that is entrusted to him, and his tenants will be privileged to have such a Lord at their service.

All of this having been made quite clear to you, I must now say that I do not, cannot and will never apologise for my decision to imprison him. We now know his character to be true, but until we did, I could not countenance his roaming freely about the ship onto which he had crept like a thief. I had the safety not only of Lucy but also of the crew and ministers to consider, and in confining him I did only as I saw best. I do not think this was a mistake, though naturally I now know it was unnecessary.

Lucy, of course, will always determine to see the best in everyone, for that is her nature, and I do not fault her for this. However, I know that this nature of hers is a gift, a charity of spirit, that is given to her alone; it is assuredly one that I do not share. Instead I must, in my flawed-ness, first consider the safety of those in my keeping, and am not sorry to have done so. I am sorry if Lucy cannot forget my choice, but I trust in your judgment of her better nature and elect to assume that she has forgiven me. What's more, I shall, with some shame, exploit her generosity and good heart, accepting that forgiveness while making no apology for my choice. I only hope we need not come to blows over my resolution, Brother, for I do not think you can have grown so much during our separation that you are yet any match for me!

As I have already indicated, we have left Terebinthia behind us and are now arrived and well settled in Galma, where we will remain until spring finds us and the weather is fine enough to permit the journey home. I trust that Lucy and I will not be so overtaken with joy at the thought of soon seeing you and Susan once more that we shirk our duty by those claimants whose petitions we have yet to hear, though we may find it a challenge at times. Fortunately Lucy, unlike Susan, delights to take her place in the council chamber; she is a lively and demanding interrogator, though she asks all her questions in such a way as to put these people entirely at their ease. She is quite brilliant at the whole process, and you would not think, to see the great deference in the manner of all these persons, that their Queen was yet so young a maid. They hold her in high regard indeed, and in seeing their courteous behaviour toward her I confess to remembering with some bitterness all those who were less than gracious when she expressed her desire to take her place in the council chamber.

I confess too that I have often, over these past days, felt considerable anger over the difficulty we encountered in other provinces before this one. The Seven Isles, though you may not know it, are not a place where women who take a seat in council chambers may find themselves welcomed. Lucy, for her part, was too gracious to force the issue and contented herself with meeting and acquainting herself with the people of the Seven Isles in other ways, which she even now continues to assure me were more than adequate for our purposes. Yet seeing her shine here, observing how easily and with such strength she takes her rightful place at the table, and witnessing the effect she has on all those who will, I trust, in short order make their first bows to her at Cair Paravel, I find myself wishing that I had handled the matter better. I wish I had asked her to be more forceful in the Isles; she excels at this task, at this matter of government, and I cannot help but think she would have made the Islanders sit up and take notice— that, or ignore her at their peril!

Were I not so biased in my high opinion of her, I would likely agree that she was no doubt quite right to insist on yielding to the tradition of our hosts. A first diplomatic foray is not the time to throw one's weight about, to insist on the right of the visiting King to have his sister, the Queen's grace, shown every respect and honour that is due to her, no matter how dearly I might have wished to. She did not welcome the defeat (and a defeat it was, no matter how mannerly they may have been in thwarting her) but she accepted it with a grace that I did not feel equal to the task of matching. Perhaps, in time, I may come to be that sort of person who can accept slights against his family for the sake of a greater purpose, but for now that day seems far off indeed. I confess to you that I hope it will never come.

I confess, too, that although I am determined to pay the Galmians every courtesy that is due to them and to hear their claims with that same sober judgment with which I have heard every claim thus far, I struggle in discharging those duties that were, some months ago, much easier to bear. I seem to miss Narnia more keenly these days. Perhaps this is brought on by the knowledge that it is so close— both the land itself, and the idea of what the land could become, that idea which first set us on this journey to begin with. Perhaps knowing that both home and our plans for that home are so nearly within our grasp has made me desire it all the more, and possibly that is why I am so eager to board the ship and return at last to that somewhat patched-together castle and the good Beasts and wondrous beings that comprise our home. Or it may be I am simply weary of travel, and ready to put up my feet by the fire and hear, from you and Susan, your tales and travails before Lucy and I share our own— but I think it sounds finer to put it the first way, don't you agree?

No matter the motivation behind it, know that I am glad to think we will soon be making that last journey, that we will soon come in sight of the spires of Cair Paravel and that we will leave off our travels for the warmth of the hearth and the joy of knowing ourselves, for however brief a space of time, home at last.

In readiness,

Peter

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** This was originally just meant to have letters between sisters and letters between brothers, but then I realised Lucy would almost certainly want to send a letter to both Susan and Edmund, and so she got to write an extra one. I was also torn over what style of writing to use with these, unable to decide (for an embarrassingly lengthy stretch of time) whether they would be more medieval or modern in tone, and in the end I decided to largely forego both options in favour of a third. Since Frank and Helen would have been products of the Victorian age, I elected to have Narnian correspondence follow most closely after the somewhat romantic, flowery style of Victorian-era correspondence. The chief exception, as you may have noted, was Edmund; he seems to insist on being the exception to most rules.

Now, I can never decide if the epistolary format is the height of literary achievement, or just the worst kind of cop-out a writer can make. I suppose it really all depends on how it is handled. I will leave it to you to determine whether this chapter was handled well, or . . . well, not.

Sometime in between packing boxes and moving furniture and working and sleeping and receiving multiple visits from family, I plan to finish and post the next chapter of _Someone Else's Story_, hopefully inside of a week. We will just see if I can manage that, now, won't we?

Up next: Draw Near, in which hearts and home do just that.


	19. Draw Near

Draw Near

O0O0O0O

"And this," Lucy said, reaching the last in a somewhat long list of names, "is Byrt."

Peter, who had sat, glassy-eyed, through an introduction that had been about ten minutes longer than he had expected, managed to nod to Byrt. Byrt, who was not quite two, was too busy chasing a black beetle to notice that the King had nodded to him, so Lucy gently caught Byrt by the hand and steered him back around to face King Peter.

"Dgoo!" said Byrt, and broke free to go toddling back to his mother, who was standing quite some distance away, deep in conversation and apparently unaware that her offspring had been commandeered by the Queen of Narnia for an introduction to the King.

"Lucy . . ." said Peter, quite faintly.

"Oh but wait," Lucy admonished him, "for you've not yet met the kittens!"

Peter, who had just met far more children under the age of five than he had even imagined could be contained in one King's court, did not feel equal to the task of meeting kittens, too. He told Lucy as much, and then regretted it immediately after for his sister's face at once fell and she looked deeply wounded.

"I'm sorry," Peter said, "Lucy of course I'll meet the—"

"No, that's all right." Lucy's voice was very small, "I quite understand. They aren't really subjects, of course, nor even potential subjects, so of course it's not as important that you meet them. I only thought— but of course I was wrong." She took her seat at Peter's side without another word, leaving the boy to feel about two inches tall, because of course the worst part of the whole speech was that Lucy hadn't said any of it to make Peter feel guilty— she really meant every word, was thoroughly repentant, and Peter felt like a worm to have made her feel thus.

"Lucy," he said helplessly, "Lucy, no, I quite _want_ to—" but he was cut off by the approach of a cheerful, short man in very long robes and a tall crown— King Todd of Galma, a most enthusiastic person who was badly prone to dropping things. Lucy had liked him at once, and they had struck up a most improbably close friendship over the course of the Narnian company's weeks spent in that kingdom.

"Your Majesty," King Todd nodded happily to Peter, who smiled and nodded in return. "Your Majesty," the King repeated, nodding to Lucy, who also beamed and nodded back. "If it's quite agreeable, we thought we might see about starting the next round of meetings sometime soon. Tomorrow is expected to be quite fine, you see, and so we thought we had better get most of this sort of thing done with, so we might have a picnic tomorrow."

"Oh!" Lucy's face shone, and she clapped her hands. "Oh, how lovely— a picnic!"

Peter bit down on a smile. The thing he had most noticed about Galma since their arrival was that it seemed to be populated with all that world's closest imitations of their Lucy. Everything, as far as the Galmians could see, was generally a good thing, life was more or less lovely to live, and the boring bits of otherwise lovely lives could easily be taken in stride because of course there was bound to be a better, brighter thing that would follow not long after— such as a picnic. Lucy, Peter thought, had never been in such like company as she was now.

"Indeed, a picnic," King Todd nodded in such a way that his crown looked in grave danger of being nodded right off his head. Vexed, he put up a hand to keep it in place; one easily formed the impression, on seeing him thus, that King Todd did not usually make a habit of wearing his crown, and had possibly dug the thing out of storage purely for the occasion of the Narnian visit— and indeed, he did not, and had. "This pleases you, Madam?"

"Oh, yes!" Lucy gave a little bounce in her seat. "Where shall it be? What will we eat, do you know? Will there be music, and games, do you think?" For Lucy dearly loved music, and had a persistent recollection of picnics that featured games.

"Music of course, and games sound a capital idea," King Todd decided. "Would her Majesty do us the favour of consenting to plan some of these? For the Galmians should esteem it a great honour to be instructed in the type of amusements that are favoured in Narnia— and of course we would be delighted to instruct you in Galmian sport, too."

"Oh, I should be very pleased," Lucy decided, already turning pink with pleasure. She would have set to planning any number of diverting games at that moment (she was already trying to work out where they would obtain coconuts enough for the coconut-shy) had Peter not suggested that, a picnic clearly having been elected the order of tomorrow, they had better get underway with the diplomatic matters of today.

Thus did the Narnian envoy find themselves grouped around the big, oval-ish table that the Galmian council used for occasions such as these— and for many other occasions, too. The table, you see, was not set in any formal council chamber, but rather in a large, bright and airy room that doubled as Queen Ava's salon and, occasionally, also served as a place for the kitchen maids to peel the vegetables (the chimney in the castle kitchen was inclined sometimes to smoke quite badly; at such times Queen Ava said that naturally the staff could not be expected to sit and smother, and so had long ago instructed them to make free use of the council chamber/salon for whatever purpose they found most pressing).

In addition to the Galmian council, the kitchen staff and Queen Ava and her ladies, the room was also used as a playroom for the castle children (three of those which Peter had met that day were at that moment duelling fiercely —and noisily— with short wooden swords, which battle showed no signs of being won by any side at any near point) a drying-room for those garments that could not be contained by the wash-house, and (at this particular point in time) as a whelping-room and nursery for the respective litters of a highly irritable cat and (by unfortunate coincidence of conception date) a deeply nervous spaniel. It was therefore, by necessity, quite a _large_ room, but Peter may be forgiven for finding it a trifle close as he squeezed past a drying-tree laden with robes of state and nearly got his heel nipped by the spaniel before he managed to find a seat at the council table.

Lucy, climbing into the chair at Peter's side, sat up beautifully straight and looked all around the table, smiling her joy and welcome at each of those who gathered there. Once everyone had found a seat (or, in the case of the Beasts who could not make use of the chairs, a space at the table wide enough to permit them to stand and observe and participate in all goings-on) King Todd made a little speech of welcome, expressing his hope that all would continue to come together in that same spirit of joyful, common purpose which had marked all such meetings prior to this point. He then yielded the floor to Peter and Lucy, that they might say anything they thought pertinent.

Peter, for his part, expressed his thanks handsomely, and then looked to Lucy. Lucy looked in turn to Peter, and smiled in such a simple, delighted way that Peter at once remembered all too keenly how his sister had, in other kingdoms they had visited, been flatly —no matter how graciously— denied this, her rightful place at the council table. Yet she had not been short or impolite about it; indeed she had conducted herself with all the grace that one might expect of a Queen. And here, in this room, in this land —this land where kings kept crowns in storage, where the wash dried in council-chambers and kitchen maids peeling potatoes gossiped alongside their Queen sewing with her ladies as a cat and dog nursed litters in such close proximity that occasionally a pup got swapped for a kitten and custody disputes arose, necessitating clumsy mediation by loud, active, sword-wielding children— she was at last allowed that place that was hers by rights, but which she refused to grasp or beg for when people were so blind as to deny it to her.

Suddenly, Peter found he did not mind the children hurling challenges at top volume, the damp sleeve of a chemise that tickled the back of his neck or even the puppy that had elected to cut its milk teeth by gnawing adoringly on the toe of the High King's boot. Not for anything would he complain of such things when his sister could sit at his side and prove what he already knew to be true— she, for all her tender years and ingenuous smiles and abandoned delight in the simplest of things, was already that very thing which Peter so hoped he might one day become: a leader whom any should be pleased and proud to follow. If these Galmians could see even that one thing —and the solemn, silent respect they showed her now as she, a girl-queen whose feet still did not reach the floor, addressed herself to them was proof enough that they could— then Peter did not care where they hung their wash, where they chopped their vegetables or how many puppies chewed on any part of him. They were welcome in his home, because they had made Lucy welcome in theirs.

It seemed that Lucy, even if she did not follow her brother's precise line of thought, certainly shared the same general sentiment. She smiled beautifully around at everyone there, her whole face alight with eager anticipation of all that was to come.

"Dear friends," she said, "by your courtesy and with your good will, let us begin to build our family."

"Hear, hear," Peter grinned. Then, as everyone began to rustle papers and check where they had left off last time, he leaned over to put his mouth by Lucy's ear. "And afterward," he murmured, "I should be most delighted if your Majesty would consent to introduce me to the kittens."

O0O0O0O

"And will you, Eurveth, whose name was once Tarshett, to the full extent of your ability, be faithful to discharge the trust that is placed in you this day by the virtue of this ceremony?"

Queen Susan stood very tall. In her hands she held a cup, and she looked across the rim of this cup into the eyes of the woman who faced her. Eurveth, looking steadily back, inclined her head.

"I will."

"Then welcome, Eurveth. You are this day given charge of the properties, tenants present and future, and holdings that comprise the property known as Three Stone Shore. By right of inheritance you will from this day on be granted the titles of Countess of Threestone and chatelaine of First Stone Keep, and are awarded all rights, privileges and responsibility pertaining thereto. Bear it well."

Susan extended the cup she held, and Eurveth clasped her hands around it, the long, dark fingers covering the small, pale hands of the young Queen.

"Take, and drink," Susan murmured. Both women held the cup as the Countess complied. "'Tis your cup, Lady Eurveth," Susan announced, her voice carrying even to the farthest wall of the chamber in which all the Narnian ministers, the Archen council and both King Lune and King Edmund stood. "It is given unto you this day by your queen; 'tis your cup, and your home. What now will you do with these gifts?"

"They will be used in the service, now and always, of those who trust in me to lead them and of they who gave them unto me," Eurveth replied. "If it pleases my Queen— take, Madam, and drink."

Susan did, placing her hands over Eurveth's and tilting the cup to her own lips. She savoured the draught of light summer wine, as she had done each time they had performed the ceremony that day.

"Welcome," Susan said, and smiled.

Even then, it is said, even so early in her rule, there was something out of the ordinary in Queen Susan's smile— something rare and wonderful, almost staggering, that made all who saw it feel rather as though the summer sun had rose that morning to shine for them alone. Eurveth's eyes widened at the sight, and with a little start she released the cup and dropped into a Narnian's first curtsey to her Queen.

"You know," said Edmund, after they broke for lunch and the pair retreated to their chambers, "one of these days you will smile at somebody at exactly the wrong moment, and then we'll be for it."

"Oh come now, Brother," Susan laughed. She was in high spirits that day. "No war was ever waged for the sake of a woman's smile, surely! But," she put a trusting hand in Edmund's, "were it so, I do not doubt you should emerge the unquestioned victor, and so what, then, have I to fear?"

Edmund found his heart had suddenly grown too large for his chest to contain it. He swallowed around this new, painful tightness, looked at his sister and said "I don't know."

"There, now!" Susan smiled —she _would_, Edmund thought, she _would_ get them into trouble one day with that smile. For he knew, even now, that not all men were so noble that they could resist the base desire to possess such a treasure for their own— "and now you must admit it has been a good day. We have taken oaths of fealty from some two dozen new Narnians— why, Edmund, we are making our kingdom!" She paused, then, and studied him narrowly. "Is aught amiss? For you seem less pleased than I might have expected."

"Mm," Edmund said absently. "If you must have it, I'm still a bit tossed over this business—" a quick glance around ensured that they were not overheard or in danger thereof— "of Magnus."

"Truly?" Susan was surprised. "Why, Edmund, what about the man can give you pause? He is not exactly loquacious, 'tis true, but he can surely have given you no cause to doubt his word since last we spoke of this, can he?"

"No-o . . ." Edmund scowled. "Dash it all, Susan, I'll tell you plainly— I don't _know_ what it is. Best I can guess, it's that I think he's not even sure himself what he wants. Westford is a prime piece of land in a fine situation, and he is no fool; he would know what a gem it is. But instead he behaves as though . . . well, as though he'd been _sent_ here, and he's too much a soldier to complain of it, but doesn't much care to be here all the same. I know it sounds strange to put it so, but— what? Susan? What is it?"

For Susan had stopped mid-stride, an expression of surprise on her face— almost as though she were only just now seeing something she had not realised before.

"Oh!" she said, when she saw that Edmund was still watching her, "I'm sorry; I only understood that it's just as you say. Not," quickly, "with Magnus— that is, I'm sure it is as you say with Magnus, too, but I meant with Na'mia. It is _just_ as you say— Eastford is a fine property. It is a lovely home and a good situation. I can't think anyone who hoped to make her home in Narnia would be dismayed at the prospect of being mistress of such a property. But when I speak with her on the topic, her behaviour makes it seem as though she were ordered to come here and, though not given to complaining . . . she does not know that she _wants_ it. Yet I do not doubt that if we were to award her the land —as you know it is my intention to do— she would be as faithful to discharge our trust in her as any ruler, anywhere, could ever wish."

"So it is with Magnus, too," Edmund murmured. Brother and sister, now standing still in the middle of the corridor, looked at one another in consternation. King and Queen held silent counsel, and wondered what to do.

O0O0O0O

While Edmund and Susan were holding counsel on the topic of Magnus and Na'mia, Magnus and Na'mia were holding counsel of their own.

Magnus had been standing in the stable yard with Fergus, the pair of them engaged in conversation on the topic of Magnus's mare (which animal stood more or less placidly before them, her head held by the bondsman) when Na'mia appeared in the castle doorway, sighted them, and strode across the yard.

Magnus, seeing her approach, held out his hand and said "give me the line and go speak with your cousin."

"What, again? Fergus scowled. "Can one maid truly have so many secrets to share?"

"She does not share secrets," Magnus said. "She is . . . not unlike me, that way."

"She is not at all like you! She conceals nothing!" (Fergus, you see, was accustomed to women demonstrating a far greater degree of reticence than were either Edmund or Susan, and so found Na'mia unnecessarily forthcoming) "And you, my lord, reveal nothing! What confidences, then, can you possibly have had to share between you that you have _thrice_ now sent me away to—"

"Fergus," Magnus said, his jaw clenching unfavourably around the name, "if you do not wish to be released from my service this very hour and forced to spend the rest of your days sharing Narnian lodgings with the only blood kin you have, you will give me the head of my horse and leave us be." Na'mia was not quite three yards away. "_Now_."

Fergus surrendered the line attached to the mare's halter to Magnus, and left. He grumbled as he went.

"Your man dislikes me," Na'mia decided, watching him go. Magnus watched Na'mia, and shrugged.

"Fergus dislikes most things. It's a habit of his." He then turned his attention from the woman to take the measure of his horse. The lines of the animal were very unlike those of the larger, stockier, Archen horses, but there was something in the wide nostrils, the capacious ribcage, the sloped shoulders and the wide hooves that more than hinted at a speed and stamina necessary for desert life, "What," he murmured, "will the Narnians make of you, my girl?"

The mare did not seem much bothered with the problem of what the Narnians might think of her, but the question caught Na'mia's attention.

"Are you staying, then?" she asked. She spoke with the air of one who is revisiting an issue already raised, and yet she did not sound disappointed or hopeful or anything in between; she simply asked.

Magnus did not look at her right away. He squinted at the near foreleg of his mare, and checked the knee thereof with large, hard, careful hands. The mare swung her head around to inspect her master's inspection. At last Magnus straightened up and said, "I believe I must." He looked over to Na'mia. "Are you staying, too?"

Na'mia frowned. She said nothing.

"We would be neighbours," Magnus pointed out. "If you are unsure of the security of the property that is offered to you, you may of course consider that my offer of protection—"

"I am not frightened of woodland beasties," Na'mia sniffed contemptuously. "Wolves, bears and creatures from children's nightmares do not alarm me. I am not a child."

Magnus, remembering how she had fallen on the shadow-thing, felt his lips quirk. "Nay," he agreed, "art not." And for one, unguarded moment, they shared a smile.

It was most likely the shared intimacy of that smile that provoked Na'mia to ask her next question— a question I suspect she had meant to ask Magnus every time she had sought him out over the past months, but for the asking of which she had, each time, lost her nerve.

"Magnus of Westford," she said, "or not . . . who sent you to Narnia?"

Magnus grew very still. It was not the stillness of repose, for every sinew in the man's neck and shoulders stood out in sharp, tense clarity; he looked as though only a very tenuous sort of control were keeping him motionless, preventing him from doing something unexpected. But Na'mia did not fear woodland beasties, and she did not fear the coiled tension of the man who could not quite look her in the eye. At last, with careful, measured words, he spoke.

"What makes the Tarkheena believe I could be sent anywhere?" He drew himself even taller than before. "I do not take orders from any man."

"Nor," said Na'mia, "do I." She moved forward, then, stepping between Magnus and his horse, so that he was not quite so able to avoid seeing her. "And yet," she added, "I was sent here."

Magnus's eyes widened at this confession.

"Sent, were ye?" he asked roughly. "Not a spy, are you? The Tisroc, is he worried about this new kingdom they mean to build? Is he sending little girls to gather filthy intelligence for him?"

The derision in the question did not cause Na'mia to so much as blink. She simply looked steadily back at him, until he had the grace to duck his head a little in silent apology for having made such an accusation. Na'mia, seeing his contrition, was satisfied.

"I was sent," she said, "by one I had never seen before, but one whose word I could not doubt; one whose order I could not refuse." Her gaze, fierce and dark in her small face, held his. "He was a Lion, like no lion I have ever otherwise beheld. A Lion the size of an elephant calf, with a hide that shone like the gold of the sun, breath as sweet as honey and eyes as old as time. His voice thundered within me as he charged me to answer a summons I had not yet even received. He said that when the Narnian Kings and Queens sent for me, I must journey north. He said that in obeying his edict, I would find what he had planned might be mine."

"Did he, now?" Magnus asked softly. When he was not speaking at normal volume, the rough edge of his voice softened to a gentle rumble. "Did he," Magnus murmured, "say that to you, too?"

A flash of triumph, brief but unmistakeable, sparked and faded in Na'mia's eyes; she had received the answer she had thought she might.

"And do you, Tarkheena Na'mia," Magnus murmured, "believe that you have found what this Lion meant for you to have?"

"I know I have," Na'mia said calmly. "It only remains to be seen if you believe it, too."

Magnus smiled again, this time so broadly that his teeth gleamed white in the black of his beard.

"Madam," he said, "I know it."

"Then what can there be left to discuss?" Na'mia wondered. At this question Magnus startled them both by laughing.

"A considerably great deal, I should think!" he said. "By the Lion, woman— to begin with, do we stay here? Or do we return to Calmir?"

"Oh," Na'mia was a little surprised, "do you want to stay? I had thought we would return. I don't think Narnia is meant for us— at least," with a thoughtful glance over the castle wall to the distant, green hills of the neighbouring kingdom, "I don't think he means it for us for now."

Magnus's brow pulled together in a series of furrows and he demanded, "just how much did this not-Narnian Lion tell you, anyhow? Because it sounds like he told you a good sight more than he told me."

Na'mia shrugged. It was a gesture she had picked up from some of the Archenlandish nobles, and she rather preferred it over most Calormene hand-flourishes. "He said several things," she said, "but I do not believe I am meant to remember all of them for some time."

"Did he think you could forget them, then?" Magnus asked. Na'mia shrugged once more.

"With him," she said, "I do not believe he thinks things about people. He only knows them. He knew everything of me and he did not even have to tell me so. I simply saw that he knew." She lifted her chin to meet Magnus's eye. "He knew everything of you, too."

"Yes." The thought seemed only now to make an impression on Magnus. "Yes, I suppose he'd have had to. Bit of a shock, isn't it, to think there's a Lion going about out there with everything there is to know of a man carried in his head. A bit unsettling."

"Do you think so?" Na'mia considered. "I think, because it's _him_, it's not really the danger it must seem at first." She tilted her head to study the man in front of her. "You're very careful, aren't you?" she reflected.

"Sometimes."

They stared at each other a moment, each of them seeing how much they would have to learn of one another over the course of the life that they understood —though they had not actually said aloud— they would be sharing between them. At last, rather doubtfully, Magnus wondered, "er— not that this has been anything even close to official, but is there somebody I ought perhaps to ask for — er— you?"

Na'mia drew herself up to the full extent of her not-all-that-considerable height.

"You might," she said, "ask _me_."

So Magnus did, and Na'mia made no secret of her assent, which was how the King and Queen of Narnia came out into the stable yard in search of the Calmirians only to draw to an abrupt halt at the sight that met their eyes. They lingered only long enough to be informed that the difficulty over which they had been labouring would no longer be an issue, and expressed suitable appreciation of that news. Then a very few hasty words of congratulations and an even fewer number of explanations were issued, after which Edmund and Susan withdrew quickly and tactfully to the corridor, closing the door behind them.

"It's almost enough," Edmund said, as they walked back along the corridor, "to make a fellow feel superfluous, if people are going to go around sorting these things out before one even has the chance."

"Oh, I don't know." Susan's expression was a little dreamy. She trailed one hand along the mortar of the stonework at her side. "It was really rather romantic, don't you think?"

Edmund hadn't really thought about it, but nevertheless replied (trying not to sound too uncertain) that oh, yes, romantic, certainly, er, ahem.

"I hope they will be happy," Susan went on, evidently oblivious to her brother's non-committal position on the romance of it all. Edmund, still feeling a little done out of the chance to make a ruling, made muffled noises of agreement. "Of course, we'll need to ask them what they mean to do with their property, if they would like to arrange for heirs or if they prefer that it revert to the Crown . . . there will probably be a dreadful lot of paperwork . . . but I think that paperwork could be borne, for such a reason."

"Well," said Edmund, "if _you_ don't mind doing it . . ."

"Edmund!" Susan laughed. "Edmund, can you really be so vexed? Why, you heard for yourself what they said— Aslan himself instructed them to come here, to find each other. If that was _his_ ruling, then I do not see how you can find it necessary to be so put out at being deprived of the chance to make one yourself. For any ruling of yours (though I do not doubt it should be the finest and best that you could make) could only ever be second-best when Aslan had already made one of his own."

Edmund smiled ruefully. "No fair," he sighed, "telling hard truths."

"What, then, are sisters for?" Susan smiled back at him. "But," she added, "I am sure any ruling you had it in mind to make would have been a fine one, too." And she gave his hand a kind squeeze, for she was a very good sister as sisters went, hard truths or not.

O0O0O0O

Late one morning in spring, when the Galmian council chamber that was also a salon that was also a playroom that was also a drying room that was also a nursery for cats and dogs was at last empty of everything save drying laundry and cats and dogs, a queen of Narnia entered and crossed to where the cat was looking for any chance to escape her now greatly-grown kittens, who had finally come to understand that it was their purpose in life to plague her.

No sooner had Lucy sat down than did the harried parent make her escape, springing to the top of a drying-tree where she began to bathe herself, leaving Lucy to sit in the corner and hold a lapful of kittens. One of these at once occupied itself with the stealthy hunting of a loose thread on the Queen's sleeve; another batted energetically at the little girl's caressing hand, and a third curled itself into a tiny ball in an effort to sleep, but was kept from that goal by the persistent swats and nips of the fourth, which was determined to persuade the third to play.

"Look at you!" Lucy marvelled, petting each one in turn. "Look at how very _big_ you have become." She smiled as the kitten stalking her sleeve made a sudden, mad rush for its quarry, seizing the fabric in its teeth and delivering a series of wild, frantic beatings with its tiny hind feet.

"Well done," Lucy said solemnly. The kitten looked up at her, still chewing at the sleeve. "Yes, you are very brave."

Her little hands roamed over them all, smoothing out soft fur, rubbing the tiny triangles of ears, tickling the pale, pink pads of their feet and tweaking the tail of the kitten that was so determined to amuse itself by disturbing the sleep of its sibling. "Very naughty," Lucy murmured. "Can't you wait to play until she wakes up?"

The little instigator sat back and regarded the girl reproachfully. No, the blue-green eyes seemed to say, it could not wait. This was Very Important Business, this game, and had to begin immediately or else all would be lost. "_Mew_," it added, for emphasis. Lucy smiled.

"Oh you _are_ darling," she sighed, and pulled them all to her, cradling them against her chest. "I believe you are my favourite thing that I have found in all this world yet."

Peter, who had entered the room in search of his sister just in time to hear her say this, had to laugh. "Have a care, Lucy," he smiled, "for it is unbecoming of a Queen to show favouritism."

Lucy laughed too, and sat up a bit to beckon her brother to her side. "Oh, but how can I help myself? Look! They are such darlings! And see, they are so very much changed from when we first came here, are they not? They are walking and running . . . they fight and play and do the most cunning things, when before they did not even understand that they were in any world at all, much less know anything of it."

Peter, crouching beside his sister, ran a gentle hand down the back of the kitten that was trying so desperately to sleep. He smiled. "No," he agreed, "they are hardly babies anymore. Now you can see what they will become when they are grown."

Lucy smiled at the kittens, trailing her fingers across the lap of her skirt for them to chase. Peter smiled at this sight, then smiled at Lucy and rested a gentle hand on the back of her head. Lucy looked up in surprise.

"Why, what was that for?" she wondered.

"Just because." Peter settled down beside her and was promptly swarmed by kittens. "Because we are here, together, and almost home, and I am glad of it all."

Lucy smiled a little wistfully. "Susan does that, too," she said. "She puts her hand on my head, I mean. I had forgot, until you did it just now . . . it has been so _long_, Peter! It has been so long since we have seen them. I do not think of it that way, usually, because we have been kept so busy with everything that wants our attention, but then some little thing like that reminds me, and I feel it _here_," she thumped her chest, startling the kittens, "like a sharp pain, how very long we have been apart, and I will tell you frankly that I am about ready to be done with it!"

Peter, gently dislodging a kitten from his wrist, reached over to squeeze Lucy's hand. "We will be, soon enough. Why, did we not only today make rulings on the last of the Galmian claimants? 'Tis true we have yet a day or two to spend in the pleasant company of our hosts, but the business of all of this is done with. We will see a good number of our new subjects home ere the snow flies, and . . . if you will pardon the selfishness of this observation," this said with a teasing smile, "I have not found it so very unpleasant, travelling with you."

Lucy promptly flung herself at Peter's chest, hugging him fiercely and eliciting frantic squeaks from the kittens. Lucy's were that type of hug which warms you all through; thus, very warmed and glad indeed, Peter hugged her in return as she spoke, her words rather muffled by her brother's doublet and the active investigation of her moving lips by a curious kitten.

"I am the luckiest girl in all this world to have travelled with you, Peter. We have seen wonderful things, met wonderful people and have, I hope, not done too badly by all our newest Narnians. I didn't want to say anything for the longest time, because I did not wish you to think me unhappy to be with you— I'm not, you see. I'm really very pleased. Only we are two, right now, and we have been just two for . . . why, for almost a year! But we are meant to be four. It's how Aslan sent us here, and I think it's how we fare best." She lifted her face to look at him. "I am not sorry we have been two for so long. I am only so very eager for us to be four again at last."

Peter put an arm around his sister and held her tight against him.

"We will be very soon," he said, and then rested his head against the stone wall behind him. Lucy cuddled close, the kittens explored the fascinating new Mountain of Two Persons, and the High King's heart ached with the joy of knowing just how very near "soon" really was.

They sat there for as long as they could, until at last they heard the distant clanging of the gong that announced the serving of the midday meal. Even then the quiet little company was loathe to bestir itself, but Peter did confess to a degree of hunger, and so the kittens were persuaded to leave off their exploration of the pair and were returned to their much-rested mother. Then the king and queen paused to pat the puppies (the spaniel bitch kept a very wary eye on them as they did, so they did not linger) and at last made their way from the council chamber toward the feast hall.

Being as the spring was yet a chilly one, the two large fireplaces at either end of King Todd's feast hall featured roaring fires to warm the diners. Smiles were worn by all, and every member of the court who dwelt in the castle was present. Some children, already done with their meal, raced 'round the outer edge of everything and seemed to be trying to outdo one another by virtue of both speed and the volume of noise they produced. People talked, laughed and ate. Chairs for Peter and Lucy were found tucked in among many others squished in at one table, trenchers were set on the table before them and the brother and sister, having by now become accustomed to the Galmian way of doing things, leaned forward over the table and helped themselves to whatever delicacies were closest. At the Galmian feast table one could never be certain with whom one was sharing a goblet, but it scarcely seemed to matter because King Todd didn't believe in stinting the flow from his wine cellar, and so every goblet was kept full no matter to whom it belonged. Peter and Lucy, making an effort to share the one that sat between them, focused chiefly on the task of eating their fill and enjoying the company of those seated around them, but toward the end of the meal Lucy, her eyes shining, leaned over to put her mouth to Peter's ear.

"Let's have every meal at home be like this one!" she implored. "Good food, plenty to drink, and one's favourite people gathered 'round."

"It's a fine idea," Peter agreed. He paused to sample a bit of the stew that had found its way in front of him. "Perhaps we might yield to the necessity of greater formality as occasion demands, but overall, yes— I think you are right. That's exactly what we ought to do."

Lucy, her delight grown even greater than a moment before, returned to her meal and found that somebody had added a selection of cheese. She sampled each with pleasure, chased them with a bit of stew, and wondered what Susan would make of their plan for the Narnian feasts. She could hardly keep from hugging herself with glee at the knowledge that soon, so very soon, she would be able to put the proposal to Susan and hear her sister's opinion, whether good or ill, from her own lips.

_Home_, Lucy thought, and her smile grew wider still.

O0O0O0O

Susan had been engaged in putting Corin to bed (for the third time that night) when a maidservant appeared in the doorway to say that, if it pleased her Majesty, King Lune requested her presence.

"Why of course," said Susan, and turned to warn Corin that if he climbed from his bed once more that night, she would shackle him to it.

"As though I were a knight in a dungeon?" Corin's eyes lit with interest. "Would you torture me, too, Queen Susan?" he asked, and sounded so hopeful that Susan was conscious of faint despair.

"_Sleep_, Corin," she ordered, and followed the maidservant from the nursery down the corridor.

The maid led her, not to any public chamber, as Susan had expected, but rather to Queen Lora's room.

"His Majesty will join you presently, Ma'am," the maid promised, and then, on the strength of Susan's promise that the Queen had no further need of her services, retreated back down the corridor once more, leaving Susan to press lightly on the open door, pushing it farther into the room.

It was not empty, she saw; an Archen nobleman was already present, evidently engaged in tidying some odds and ends on a shelf. He betrayed some surprise at seeing her, but when Susan explained she had been invited by the King, the man nodded.

"No doubt he will join you presently. Now, if her Majesty has no further need of me . . .?" and Susan once again promised she would be quite fine on her own, thank you, so the nobleman left as well.

This left Susan to stand, alone, in a room in which she had not been since the night that its last occupant passed from that world into the kingdom beyond it. You might think that she felt rather sad and alone at realising this, and for a moment she did, but it did not last. Queen Lora's was not a room that invited sorrow. The blue and gold of the silks that decorated the bed and walls, the cosy furniture, the books and workbaskets and numerous other objects of domestic industry all comforted Susan. They were the sort of things she would very much have liked to have in her own room, and the sight of them made her feel, in an odd way, very much at home.

Of course, thinking this made her next think of Narnia, and once again the keen ache sprung up in her breast; the desire to return there, to her own room, to her own family, and perhaps to arrange her own room to look a bit more like this one, which was so warm and friendly and private a space that Susan rather badly wished—

"Queen Susan," King Lune came in through the door at that point, interrupting Susan's reverie, "I am sorry to have kept you."

"Not at all," Susan said politely, and watched as the King crossed to a shelf not far from the one that the nobleman had been putting to rights. "I am only too happy to oblige."

"Yes, indeed . . . er . . ." King Lune squinted at the shelf before him. His fingers played over the spines of the few books gathered there, and at last he seemed satisfied that he had found what he was after. Drawing seven leather-bound volumes from the shelf, he bore these over to Susan. "Here we are," he said, and set them gently, almost reverently, on the table between them.

Susan looked askance at her host, who nodded encouragingly, and so the young Queen lifted the cover of the topmost volume.

She saw on the page within a date, and a series of household lists— not unlike those lists that she and Lucy and Mrs Clogg had worked to compile a year ago, although these seemed to have been kept by somebody who knew what she was about. They were much more orderly than any Susan had seen before.

"Your Majesty," Susan said apologetically, "I am afraid I don't quite see . . ."

"My wife's, you know," King Lune murmured, and tapped an awkward hand on the top book. "Her, erm, housekeeping things . . . personal notes . . . they are too sensitive a thing for me to simply leave them in her room or in the castle archives, but," he swallowed, and a shadow rested, however briefly, on that good and kind face, "I do not think I can have them in my private quarters, either."

"Oh," Susan said, and felt a sudden rush of sympathy that she was far too tactful to display. "I see."

"I would be honoured," King Lune went on, "if you would, er . . . do me the favour of keeping them safe for a while, eh? Lora was most fond of you, my dear. Spoke very well of you, this year past. I think she would approve."

"Then of course I would be honoured to do you such a favour, your Majesty," Susan said calmly. She gathered the books to her chest as one would lift a most precious treasure, and was about to say something more but was cut off before she could even begin by the further opening of the door.

"Queen Susan," Corin said reproachfully, "aren't you going to come shackle me, now?"

"I am sorely tempted," Susan admitted, and so with King Lune's kind permission, she excused herself and took the books and Prince Corin both back to that child's room.

Corin, of course, at once lit upon the books as a possible excuse to further delay his bedtime, and so Susan explained to him that they had belonged to his mama, and she would keep them safe for him until he had need of them.

"Oh," said Corin, looking a little doubtful, "I don't know that I will need books, Queen Susan."

"Perhaps not," Susan agreed, "but one never knows. Now here, why don't you help me put them safely away for now, and then I will tell you a story that you will not find in any book, anywhere, and you will go to sleep."

Corin agreed, though quite reluctantly, that this course of action could be the one they took. He made certain to prolong the inevitable as much as he could, though, by insisting that he had to help Susan put the books away properly. Evidently in Corin's mind, "properly" storing books included opening that boy's treasured cache of Found Things to extract a leather cord of proper length with which to bind them ("Corin," said Susan, on further inspecting this collection of things Corin had found in his room and around the castle, "wherever did you find that dagger? I'm sure it's not at all safe to— wait, isn't that my brooch?") and digging a small cedar chest out from the corner of the nursery, emptying its contents all over the floor, and placing the books inside.

"There," he said, "_now_ they are safe."

Susan agreed that they were that, to be sure, and at last persuaded the little boy to take himself back to bed, where she tucked him up snugly and made good on her promise to tell him a story that could be found in no book— indeed, she created it entirely from her own mind, and Corin, toward the end of the tale, pronounced it the very best such he had ever heard.

"Will you tell me one like it every night forever after?" he demanded, and Susan confessed that she could promise no such thing.

"For you see," she said, "I will soon have to return to Narnia with King Edmund, because our family is there and we have things we must do. But do not worry for a moment that we will see no more of each other, playmate," she pressed a gentle hand to his cheek, watching the child's eyes droop, and close, "for art always welcome in our home."

She stayed seated on his bed long after the Prince had nodded off, watching him breathe, and guarding his sleep.

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** A few edits have been effected on earlier chapters of this story to make certain events flow a bit better, so if you read anything in this chapter that seemed out of sync with your previous understanding of the story's timeline, that's probably why.

I also spent quite a while wondering if that whole Magnus and Na'mia bit (which has been in the works before this story even began, for reasons that will become clearer in another story yet to come) was going to get a whole scene of its own or if it ought to be just put in there as a reflection on the part of Edmund and Susan. Then Magnus popped up in the courtyard, Na'mia went charging out to find him and it was suddenly quite out of my hands!

There is a little something tucked in here for people who are also following _Someone Else's Story_. At least one reader has already picked up on the significance of something in particular, and now who knows but that a few more may have done, too! We shall see very soon, since the next chapter of that piece will be up not too many days from now.

Before that time, though, I will (tomorrow, in fact) be climbing behind the wheel of the largest vehicle I have ever driven, and so my primary concern for the next twenty-four hours will chiefly be that I not knock the porch off our home in my desperate attempts to manoeuvre the vehicle close enough to get the piano loaded.

Meantime, thank you so much for your insights on this story. It really is a treat to know what people think as they read it and what in particular touches them, so thank you for sharing!

Up next: Homecoming. In which they do.


	20. Homecoming

Homecoming

O0O0O0O

"And you _promise_ you will be back?" Prince Corin stood, feet braced shoulder-width apart, and scowled fiercely up at Queen Susan. Queen Susan, who understood she was being scowled at only so that she would not be wept upon, at once sank into a graceful puddle of embroidered skirts in the dirt of the stable yard to make her most solemn assurances.

"It will be my greatest pleasure," she said, "to come back across the pass at Anvard and see once more the castle before me. It will be my chief delight to know that I may return to see how you fare; duty permitting and your Royal father obliging, I shall not even be gone inside of a month before I indulge in a return to Archenland, brief though it might be."

Corin chewed his lip doubtfully.

"You _promise_?" he repeated, though this time he did not sound fierce at all, but rather quiet and quite like a very small boy. Susan pressed one of the dimpled little hands between her own.

"Thou hast my vow, playmate," she said, "that if I do not return to you as soon as I am able, I shall forsake my crown and my kingdom and come to stay with you always."

Corin's face lit up at once at the thought of having Queen Susan stay with them forever, and then fell a little, for he knew that Susan would not have made such a vow if she were not confident of being wholly able to keep it. Still, if it meant that he could at least be sure she would return to visit . . .

"All right," he said, and then threw dignity to the four winds, flinging himself at her and wrapping little arms around the Queen's neck, clinging to her as long as she allowed him to. At last the King of Narnia spoke to break the silence, as well as Corin's grip on Susan.

"Your Highness?" Edmund addressed the prince with great solemnity. "Wilt thou not now surrender to your friend and ally the person of his sister? For I should find it a sore trial too, to be parted from her company; so too should our brother and sister, who even now make their journey back to us."

Corin, for just a minute, scowled fiercely up at Edmund over the shoulder of the King's sister, and looked as though he might refuse to release her. Then Edmund, still smiling quite kindly, raised an eloquent eyebrow. It was one of those little gestures that gentlemen of understanding sometimes exchange; Corin, for all that he was a very young gentleman indeed, knew that Edmund had only phrased his request so politely out of courtesy. He expected that Corin would now release Susan, and so Corin did, because he was fairly certain he was not yet of a height, weight or age that would permit him to answer ably, should the King of Narnia call him out. Corin, feeling suddenly very grown up to have held this silent exchange with Edmund, bowed very deeply and correctly to a surprised, charmed Susan. She in turn dipped a curtsey and then turned to curtsey to King Lune as well.

King Lune forbore to bow in reply, electing instead to pull Susan to him in a warm embrace.

"Madam," he murmured, releasing the pink-cheeked Narnian queen much more readily than his son had done, "know that art considered, from this day forward, a dear friend of our house. No counsel we might take will be so secret that you are not welcome to share it. No succour you might plead of us can be so great that we will refuse to answer."

"Our host is generous indeed," Susan said, and felt her throat grow close. Her eyes were very bright, and she blinked a few times as she spoke. "Your Majesty may be assured that we are deeply conscious of the honour you do us by your faith."

"'Tis not so much faith, my lady," King Lune corrected her gently, "as it is simply an unreserved offer of friendship. For you see, Archenland and Narnia have always been the closest of allies, and I see naught in our newest neighbours to give me any cause to think we should alter this arrangement. Know that in me, and in the people of my kingdom, you may always be assured of allegiance." Then he extended his hand to Susan, who accepted it, and they shook in firm accord.

Edmund, for his part, exchanged bows with Prince Corin and clasped hands with King Lune, who repeated his promise of friendship for the young King and for all of Narnia under him.

"Likewise may our host and friend count upon Narnia to share in Archenland's joys and her trials too," Edmund replied.

Then the Narnian King and Queen mounted their waiting horses, and the Archenlandish grooms released the heads of the prancing, eager pair. Norry was containable, if only barely, but Edmund lost his grip on Irra just long enough for his horse, scenting the summer grass on the far side of the wall, to decide that he'd had quite enough of good byes, thank you all the same, and so caught the bit between his teeth and set off at something very close to a gallop.

The King and his horse were out of the stable yard before the Narnian envoy gathered there had fully realised just what was going on. Susan, torn between amusement and slight alarm, tossed hasty, final thanks over her shoulder to King Lune, who was, for his part, coming down decidedly on the side of amusement at the sight of King Edmund (by now quite far afield) working to bring his eager, fleeing horse under control.

"Safe journey, Madam!" King Lune called, as Susan gathered the reins and made quick gestures at her company that they were meant to overtake Edmund with all speed. "Wind at your back, and may the Lion go out before you all the way home."

With these wishes ringing in her ears and warming her heart, Susan at last gave Norry her head. The mare was all too eager to accept this liberty, and the Narnian party made about as hasty a departure from the court of King Lune as they had made an entrance to it, so very many months before.

Susan overtook Edmund at the ridge which topped the rolling field that led down to the castle at Anvard. Edmund had contrived to draw Irra into ever-shrinking circles, at last persuading the animal that perhaps a brief pause would do him some good.

"A fine sight you were," Susan giggled, as the Narnian party fanned out around the monarchs and they resumed their journey at a slightly more seemly pace. "I thought for a moment he would have you off."

"He wasn't trying to be rid of me. He only sought to take us home; eh, Irra?" Edmund gave the smug creature beneath him a fond pat. "He is as eager to be back in Narnia as we."

"Oh, he cannot be," Susan cried, and there was a fierce note to her voice that made Edmund glance over at his sister as they rode. "I do not doubt his urgency, Edmund, but . . . he cannot possibly be as eager to return as we."

Edmund smiled, and focused on the trail ahead. "No," he agreed, and sat a little taller in the saddle, "no, I think you are quite right there; he cannot be half as eager as we."

"And only think," Susan marvelled, "that soon those we have left behind us will join us as well." For only the day before they had sorted the last of the approved claimants, organising a schedule of arrival that would allow for the greatest number of holdings to be made ready for winter before winter itself was actually upon them.

"Let us just hope they don't come before we can be sure of having a place to put them all," Edmund suggested. "Otherwise we may find the Cair offers closer quarters than we might care for."

"Mm." Susan, her head tipped back that her face might catch the warmth of the sun, was unconcerned with this prediction. "I think that Lucy and I can, between us, arrange to have everything readied. Surely our own good Beasts cannot have been idle all this year past, and whatever is left to be done, we shall all do between us, together."

Then she fell silent again, enjoying the sunshine, and Edmund said that if his sister was pleased to forsake worry for the pleasure of a summer's ride, then he would be the last man in that world to stop her. And so they rode on, a pleased and pleasant company, occasionally chatting between them but most often simply ambling along in companionable silence, heading homeward under the northern summer sun.

O0O0O0O

"Do they know you took that?" Peter stared at his sister in horrified fascination. Lucy was indignant.

"Of course they do! What, do you think I would steal from the very people who have been so good to us? Do you imagine I would steal at _all_? Queen Ava made a present of him to me; isn't he just the most cunning little thing you have ever seen?" And she tickled the nose of the fluffy grey kitten she held. The kitten sneezed and batted at the Queen's teasing fingertips with velveteen paws, making the little girl laugh.

"Well . . . all right . . ." Peter cast a doubtful, sideway glance at the little animal Lucy cradled in her arms as they made their way up the gangplank, onto the _Splendour Hyaline_. "But what do you imagine the ship's cat will make of him? I can't think she'd take too kindly to an interloper."

"We won't know until we try, though, will we?" Lucy pointed out. She cuddled the kitten a little closer as they boarded the ship.

The king and queen (and the kitten) found their place by the rail as the ship's crew ran about, exchanging shouts and instructions. Most of the ministers had taken themselves below decks, because of course there is not usually anything useful that can be done at such a time if you are not a member of the crew and well-versed in the manning of the ship. Peter and Lucy only stayed by the rail because it had become their custom to wave at all those assembled on the docks. The kitten stayed because it had attached itself to Lucy in such a fashion that defied easy removal— each one of the creature's tiny claws were sunk firmly into the little girl's gown, and the queen's new pet seemed mightily displeased at the suggestion that he retract them. Lucy's kitten had never before been to sea, and found it all rather alarming.

Lucy, unlike her pet, was not alarmed; simply wistful.

"We'll come back soon, won't we, Peter?" the young queen asked. She clutched her clinging kitten with one hand, and waved with the other. "I do love it here."

"Of course we'll come back," Peter promised. "They will want to meet Susan and Edmund too, after all, and Susan and Edmund should see these lands that we have visited. I don't know about _soon_," thinking of all the new Narnians they would need to see settled before the coming winter, "but we will certainly come back."

"That's all right, then," Lucy decided. She cuddled in a little closer to Peter as the ship's sailed filled and the _Splendour Hyaline_ set out in earnest for the open seas. The Galmians on shore grew rather small, then smaller still, and finally they and all other details were lost in the blue haze of the Galmian coast. Lucy, watching this happen, felt a hitch in her chest.

"I love them dearly," she murmured, "and I am so glad to have met them all, and yet . . ." she turned her focus from the shore they had left to look out over the waters, toward the West and the land to which they would soon return. Peter, turning with her, understood.

"It will not be much longer," he assured her. His arm around his sister tightened, she pressed close, and they stood together in that moment of shared longing. They were interrupted by the kitten, which thought it unfair of Lucy to clutch him so close when he was not nearly as homesick as she, and so emitted an indignant squeak. Lucy and Peter broke apart at the sound, with Lucy uttering profuse apologies to the bristling, irate kitten.

"We'll take you down to my room," she promised. "Won't you like that?"

Peter, being of the opinion that Lucy's kitten was fast shaping itself to be that sort of cat which likes little or nothing at all, kept quiet. He simply followed his sister and her sceptical pet below deck and down the corridor to the room that had been his sister's most constant home for almost a year. Lucy threw the door wide with an air of ownership that matched her long acquaintance with her quarters and bore the kitten over to her bed, where she deposited him gently and told him how darling he was.

"He will soon have an exceedingly grand opinion of himself, Lucy," Peter warned. Lucy, for her reply, simply tumbled the kitten over onto his back, inducing him to make war with her fingers as she asked,

"Well, did you ever know a cat that did not?"

To this question Peter could not truthfully reply in the affirmative, and so he smiled his resignation and joined Lucy and the kitten in play.

O0O0O0O

The voyage from Galma to the harbour below Cair Paravel is not unduly taxing, nor is it even very lengthy at all, but for Lucy and Peter, who had been so long away from their home and family, it seemed interminable. Every few hours Lucy would set down what occupied her attention and fly to the rail of the deck, searching the horizon for some sign that Narnia was within reach. Every few hours Peter would retreat to his cabin, shut himself in and close his eyes until the dull, heavy ache in his breast had subsided to something close to bearable. When night fell brother and sister, having bade one another a good sleep, would crawl into their beds and whisper wishes for sweet sleep to the brother and sister who were too far away to hear.

I would not, of course, have you believe that they were melancholy all the way home. It is true that Peter found he had no more petitions with which to distract himself, and so had many empty hours he was forced to fill in whatever way he could invent. It is also true that Lucy was not able to amuse herself with her kitten as she had hoped; the ship's cat had discovered him the very day they had set sail and, far from resenting the interloper as Peter had expected, she had decided he was badly in want of some exceedingly devoted nurturing, and undertook to provide him with it. Last Lucy had seen of her pet, he had been dragged under the stairs for a thorough scrubbing. He had, as usual, looked deeply unimpressed.

Yet even though they had not these distractions to occupy their time, Peter and Lucy were the farthest thing from sad. Indeed the whole ship's company was as merry as they had ever been, rejoicing that the long journey was nearly at an end. There was dancing and music every night; people told stories and riddles and clever jokes. Queen Lucy's tales at these gatherings were particularly in demand, for the little girl's eyes took on a rare and wondrous sparkle as she spun tales too fantastic to be believed, but so wonderful that you wished you might believe them anyway. They made a fine company indeed and I do not think you could have stood to be unhappy around them even for a moment— they simply would not have allowed it.

But Peter and Lucy, even as they delighted in such pleasant company, could not help thinking of home and all who awaited them there. I think, therefore, that you may understand why, on that grey, misty morning when Lucy woke and once again climbed to the top deck and ran, light-footed and aching-hearted, to the rail, she let out such a piercing, glad cry at the sight that met her eyes. For there, across the wide water and in the grey light of pre-dawn, Lucy at last saw the hope of her heart rise from the mists, the rocky Eastern shore of Narnia and the proud spires of Cair Paravel heralding their journey's end at last.

O0O0O0O

Susan was seated at her desk pretending interest in the charts spread out before her. On any other day she would have taken a keen and genuine interest in the seating arrangement of the High Table in the feast hall, but today . . . something was stirring inside her, making concentration impossible. Even sleep had deserted her that morning long before her usual hour of rising— and Susan did love sleep. But she had got up with the sun that day, almost as though Lucy herself had been there to shake her awake, and once Ethelfritha had seen to the Queen's wardrobe Susan thought that as long as she was up she might as well occupy herself with something useful.

So it was that Susan sat at her writing desk in the library and fought to convince herself that the queer, tugging ache in her breast was not nearly as pressing as determining which Minister should be seated to Edmund's right. Edmund, having voiced his preference and been overruled (Susan deeming Lobie of status insufficient to warrant seating at the High Table, and Lobie, curled up at Edmund's feet, heartily agreeing) stretched out on a couch near his sister and pretended to doze. In reality he, too, felt a strange pull in his chest that made it impossible for him to forget himself sufficiently to relax, and he squirmed on the couch in grim discomfort.

"Maybe we're ill," he muttered, tossing and twisting and making every effort to settle.

"Oh, I don't think so." Susan squinted at the chart in front of her as though she expected it to have suddenly changed from the last thirty times she had tried to view it. "I think only—" then she lifted her eyes to the window in front of her, that window which cast morning's warm, yellow-grey light across her chart, and she stopped speaking, gasped, and for just one, frozen moment did nothing at all save sit and stare and doubt her own eyes. Then she was freed from her disbelief, was up and moving, her face no longer a study in pained concentration but a glowing and joyful thing to behold.

"Edmund!" she cried, flying to the library door, "Edmund, oh Edmund, get _up_— they're _home_!"

Even before the words were fully spoken she was out the door and flying down the corridor, leaving Edmund to tumble from his perch (he very nearly kicked Lobie in the head as he did— he can only be grateful that Lobie's is such a forgiving nature, for if Lobie had not been a Talking Dog, he should have given Edmund a firmly instructional nip) and scramble to his feet faster than you would have believed possible. Then he, too, was out the door, with Lobie running close behind.

O0O0O0O

The _Splendour Hyaline_ had not yet put into port when Susan emerged from the castle, but it was within the bounds of the harbour. The naiads churned and frothed in the water, casting up geysers in a wet and sparkling celebration of the long-awaited return. The trees that cradled the harbour like a wooded jewel danced and swayed, glorying in the homecoming, and Narnians of every imaginable description poured forth from the depths of Cair Paravel.

So it was that a company weary of travel and ready for home put into port and found themselves met by the dancing, smiling, howling and yowling heart of that home; so it was that when the gangplank of the _Splendour Hyaline_ came to rest on the shores of Narnia once more, a cheer such as I am sure you have never heard before rose up and was carried over the water. And so it was that Queen Lucy had not even the chance to set her foot (rather loosely and ill-fittingly garbed in a pair of Peter's outgrown boots, the young Queen having at last outgrown every pair of her own slippers while at sea) on the boards of the newly-built dock before a tall, lovely lady caught her in an impassioned embrace and swung her about, pressing her face into the younger girl's neck and wetting it with tears of joy.

"Lucy," she wept, "oh, Lucy can it be you? You are so _grown_!"

Only then did Lucy realise that this lady, in her new, fine gown with her raven's wing hair plaited down her back and her smile like the summer sun, was her very own sister.

"Susan!" she cried, and returned the hug with tenfold vigour. "Oh, Susan—" laughing, disbelieving, "_I've_ grown?"

"You are not small, now," Susan murmured, and pressed her face to the sun-kissed golden curls. "You are not even a little small. Lucy, you _are_; you are quite _grown_."

"I am not nearly so grown as Peter," Lucy protested, then turned to direct her sister's attention to that young man, who had managed to at least set foot on the dock before he was tackled in a hug by his brother. "You see?"

Susan did see. Peter, turning at last from Edmund's embrace to greet his sister, stopped and stared at this young lady who had so surprised Lucy. He had only just absorbed the fact that Edmund was now nearly of a height with him, and now this . . .

"Gosh, Su," he said, and though he looked more a man than any of his siblings had ever seen him, he sounded very much a startled little boy, "you've— you've changed."

"I might say the same," she said, and her throat closed over the words at the thought of the time all four had been apart. "Oh, Peter— it's been so _long_." She flew at him, and was caught up and twirled around just as she had twirled Lucy, right there in front of everyone.

"Too long," Peter agreed, as Lucy took this chance to pounce on Edmund, squeezing him and beaming adoringly up (quite _far_ up, she noted) into his face as he returned the hug, wordless and overcome. "Too long. Let it never be so long again, eh?"

"Never, ever, _ever_ so long again," Lucy agreed, still squeezing Edmund.

"Lucy—" Edmund said, with a gaspy hitch to his voice.

"Oh!" cried the Queen, and released him. "I'm sorry. Did I hurt you?"

"Only in places," Edmund assured her, gingerly rubbing his abdomen. "No mortal wounds, though, or anything like." Then he smiled at the stricken expression on his sister's face and said, much more gently, "but I would suffer much worse, and gladly, to be so welcomed again."

Lucy's face glowed to hear it. Then her eyes widened, and she clapped her hands together in sudden remembrance. "Oh!" she said, "oh, speak of being welcome—" and she turned, plunged into the growing crowd of sailors at her back, and dragged forth from their midst a slim, tall, blushing boy who seemed to desire nothing so strongly as the chance to turn himself inside out to be free of the sudden scrutiny of an entire kingdom.

"This," said Lucy, presenting the boy to her siblings with such enthusiasm that you might reasonably have expected him to be much taller, broader and far more accomplished than he really was, "is Peridan." She leaned forward and murmured, conspiratorially, "he's to be just Peridan, for now. We don't know his actual title yet, you see; Peter said that we'd have to talk it over with both of you first."

"Er— quite," said Edmund, who was not altogether equal to the task of fully hiding his smile. He managed to make it a kind one, though, and took Peridan's hand in his. He clasped the boy's elbow with his other hand, and shook the newcomer's hand firmly. "Well met, my friend," he said quietly. "My brother and sister speak highly of you; my trust in them is all the assurance you need that my welcome is indeed sincere."

"My lord king is too kind," Peridan murmured, flushing an even darker red, and stepped back as soon as decency permitted. Then he faced Susan, and suddenly Edmund's handshake was not the most flustering thing that he encountered that day, for the Queen took both his hands in both of hers and kissed him fondly on each cheek.

"My lord Peridan is indeed welcome!" she exulted, smiling up at him in such a way that tied the poor fellow's tongue. "For we know what deeds you performed on behalf of our brother and sister. They are such that thanks alone would seem an insult. I would have you know that you are now and always welcome in our home." Then she kissed his cheeks again and stepped back, leaving him in such a state that Peter decided the kindest thing to do would be to let Peridan drop back in amongst the sailors for a minute as the four broke apart and turned to greet their subjects.

As Peter and Lucy moved forward into the midst of the crowd before them, Susan and Edmund pressed into the midst of the sailors and ministers who stood grouped on the docks, somewhat trapped between the ship they had left and the shore they desired.

"Why of course, you are Wardon's brother!" Susan cried, clasping the hands of an Archenlandish sailor easily three times her own size, who had been introduced to her as Ward. "My brother and I had the great pleasure of making your brother's acquaintance when yet we were in Archenland. He is a good, dear man, and his wife a most amiable lady. They both spoke of you with such fondness and respect that I was at once confident my brother and sister were in sound hands. What a pleasure it is to have this chance to meet you for myself!"

Ward the sailor's mumbled reply to this charming greeting was lost to all ears save Susan's own, but he was coloured a deep and painful scarlet as he made it, and Susan's answering smile made him turn redder still.

Edmund, for his part, greeted the returned Narnian ministers with all the enthusiasm of a long-lost kinsman, and enquired after their health and the enjoyment of the journey in such a way as to make all of them wish they had come home that much sooner— for so do all the best parts of home make us feel, when we return to them.

This was exactly how Peter and Lucy felt too as they moved amongst the cheery, cheering Narnians who had come down from the castle to bid them welcome. The enquiries after their voyage, wishes of good health, reports on the running of the kingdom and the general enthusiasm in every greeting put smiles on the faces of the King and Queen that could not be cast off in a hurry. Peter was immediately brought abreast of any number of little issues that had cropped up and been resolved in his absence, and Lucy was told of every birth, marriage and death that had taken place since she had last set foot on Narnian soil. You might think this would be too much to take in all at once, but the King and Queen had not spent all their time in foreign kingdoms without learning to absorb new information at a rapid pace, and found that this skill had not deserted them now they had returned home.

At last it was agreed that all would make their way up the hill to the Cair, and a joyous party they made, as I am sure you can imagine; a surging, laughing, chattering crowd, the sort that makes you want nothing more than to join in their number simply for the joy of the thing. Each of the kings and queens lost sight of one another as they walked, all of them being ringed in by crowds of exulting Narnians, and they tried not to mind it very much because of course these people had hoped and waited for their returned just as faithfully as each pair of regents had done.

"It's just as Susan said in her letter, isn't it?" Lucy would point out later on. "We none of us really belong to ourselves anymore, do we? We're all very much public property."

All too well did they look it, too, with Edmund flanked by Narnian ministers who could not wait to reach the council-chambers to tell him of their many rulings over the course of their travels, and Peter escorted by certain persons who comprised a part of the castle guard as who were anxious that he be kept abreast of their latest plans to make the castle as secure as possible. Susan was accompanied by the Archenlandish crew members, every one of them as gently solicitous of her as though she were a best-loved daughter, and Lucy (keeping a still-tongue-tied Peridan close at her side, and making explanations and introductions to him much faster than he could have hoped to keep track of) was surrounded by Beasts of every description who yowled, barked, leaped, twisted and bumped fond heads against her little hands, each welcoming her in whatever way was customary for his own species.

They did indeed look public property, and yet none of them seemed to mind it in the least. There was no getting away from it, either, for as soon as they arrived at the Cair it seemed there were any number of things that wanted doing. Peter's ruling was sought on the subject of boundary lines, Susan was called away to the kitchen to lend her opinion on the matter of the main course, Edmund wanted to introduce Peridan to a few of those Beasts who would be his tenants and Lucy's presence was demanded by no fewer than a dozen persons in a dozen different places all at once.

So did the day wear on, with horses for the ride home readied for the crew of the _Splendour Hyaline_ ("oh, but not before they have eaten first!" cried Lucy, and so she and Susan arranged for a lunch more than sufficient to fill the stomachs and haversacks of the men returning home). Disputes and disagreements (as must always arise in the running of a castle) were sorted and settled, issues of property were dealt with to the best of everyone's ability, and Peridan had, by the end of that day, met not only his tenants but the friends, family and foe thereof as well, with Edmund providing several helpful suggestions on how best to mediate the sort of feuds that were likeliest to arise between all of these.

The meal that night was, due in large part to Lucy's input and Susan's careful attendance to these instructions, very much like those that were enjoyed by the Galmian court, only with far fewer humans and a very few more animals. The food was good and plentiful, the company as merry as anyone could have wished, and (as Lucy discovered, on taking rather too large a gulp of what she had believed to be fruit juice) Mrs Clogg had evidently uncovered the wine cellars of Cair Paravel.

"The winter hasn't hurt it much at all, I see," Peter observed, tasting the bounty of his own goblet with obvious appreciation. "Something else to do with the magic of the place, I suppose?"

"Near as we can figure," Edmund nodded. "Though it seems a pretty patchy sort of magic that's floating around this place. Keeps the papers intact, the books whole and the wine as fine as any I've tasted, but when it comes to preserving the roads or holding up the walls—" and they all looked over to the fresh new stone and mortar that covered the hole where the wall had given way— "it's good for nothing. Very awkward."

"Better good wine and books to read than nothing at all, though, don't you think?" Lucy asked. "I mean, how much more dreadful would it be to have a wall fall on one's head if all one had to drink was vinegar!"

The others agreed that this was so.

"But what does my lord Peridan think of our table?" Susan turned a friendly smile on the guest who sat at Lucy's right hand. "Surely it must be a change for you, our Narnian home and way of dining."

Peridan thought of the cold, wide table at which he had taken meals with his parents, then looked out over the cosy Narnian feast-hall, its lovely mortar work cast in soft relief by the blazing candles that studded the heavy iron chandeliers, and the long, low tables filled with every manner of creature, all of them chatting and laughing like the oldest and dearest of friends. He smiled.

"My lady queen speaks truer than she can possibly know," the boy murmured. He raised the goblet he held and spoke with as much feeling as Peter and Lucy had ever heard him display. "A toast, if my sovereigns will indulge me! To the joy of a foundation well-laid and to the comfort of the home that will be built thereon. May yours, my lords and ladies, be the finest rule this kingdom has yet seen and will see for many years to come."

"Hear, hear!" cried a Dwarf farther along the High Table, who had heard the well-wishing. He lifted his own goblet with enthusiasm. "To a home for all, and to the long rule of these Four, our noble Kings and Queens."

The toast echoed all around the hall, until the rafters creaked with the thunder of it. Then all drank to the good wishes voiced, and I do not blush to tell you that the Kings and Queens of Narnia were very bright-eyed indeed at the conclusion of this fine toast.

"Oughtn't we say something?" Lucy whispered, once the echoes had died down, and the general agreement was that yes, they ought, but nobody seemed certain what to say, and so Edmund reached over and tugged Susan's chair from under her, which sent the Queen surging to her feet to keep from falling to the floor, thereby nominating her for the post of speechmaker.

"Er—" Susan composed herself with unrivalled speed, facing the crowded, expectant hall. She stood a little straighter, lifted her chin and spoke. "With such confidence placed in us by Aslan himself and by our very good and true fellow Narnians . . . why, how, then, can we expect to do aught but succeed?" She lifted her goblet to toast the hall, and her brothers and sister followed suit. "To the good health of the dearest and best subjects for which any King and Queen could ever ask."

Although Susan would later revenge herself upon Edmund in her own way (no concrete record of this deed has yet been found, but those sources available to us indicate that it involved quantities of tallow, an irate cat and a particularly large goose) it was a splendid toast that she made that night, and it was, overall, a very fine homecoming feast indeed.

O0O0O0O

It was only long after the feast was done and even the hardiest dancer had confessed himself unequal to the task of taking even one more step that did not carry him in the direction of his bed (or nest, or roost, or whatever the case happened to be) that the Kings and Queens of Narnia found they were at last (although weary, full and worn) alone with each other.

They were by that point too tired to fall against one another as they had done much earlier that day, but you could see in their faces that they would have liked to very much. Instead of a collective embrace, however, they settled for walking together to bed.

"Will it always be like this, d'you suppose?" Lucy wondered. She leaned on Edmund as she walked and covered a mighty yawn. "I mean, with so many _people_?"

"There will probably always be people," Peter admitted.

"But perhaps there will not always be _quite_ so many as there were tonight," Susan smiled.

"Yes, there were a lot," Edmund said, as though the thought had only just occurred to him. "And what a racket they made! But they were very good sorts overall, I think . . . I hope all the others we'll be fetching home soon will be good sorts, too."

"It's a bit late in the game to say you're not sure they will be, don't you think?" Peter said, and sounded alarmed. Edmund only laughed in reply, which was not, perhaps, the most reassuring thing he might have done.

"I'm sure they will be everything that Narnians should be," Susan interposed. She spoke with that same tranquility she had displayed all day, a trait that had caused Peter to steal more than one confused glance at her since that morning, and which had made Lucy whisper to Edmund that night "why, Susan's quite grown _up_, isn't she?"

Susan smiled at Lucy, and Lucy, wearied though she was, tilted her head from where it rested on Edmund's shoulder to land on Susan's.

"I'm sure you're right," the younger Queen sighed, and Edmund added his own assent to this belief.

"Not to say we probably haven't let _some_ perfectly tiresome people in, of course," he went on, "for I'm sure we have, but . . . I don't imagine we will find them lacking in any _serious_ way."

"You grow increasingly enthusiastic about these people, Ed," Peter said dryly. "I half expect to wake up one morning and find that they are plotting to poison us all."

"Well," said Edmund, "not _all_ of us, surely. I mean, Susan and I let them into Narnia in the first place, so I am sure they would remember us fondly for that. And Lucy is too cheerful to poison."

"So . . . just _me_, then," Peter said.

Edmund considered, and then nodded.

"Yes."

"So you are saying," Peter clarified, "that the whole pack of new Narnians coming from the south might in fact be nothing more than an elaborate assassination attempt on your part, is that right?"

"Got to admire my cunning, haven't you?" Edmund grinned, then dodged to the left just in time to evade Peter's swinging fist. "Oho!" he cried, "you're just _asking_ to be assassinated, you are!"

Lucy, watching as the kings chased one another down the corridor, hollering dire threats against each other as they went, could not contain a giggle. She felt Susan's shoulder tense at the sound, and then soften under her head once more. Lucy looked up into her sister's face, curious.

"Is something wrong?" she wondered, and Susan, smiling at Lucy, shook her head.

"Oh, no, dear— quite the opposite, actually. I only just heard your laugh, and thought of how long it had been since I heard it last. Then I realised that there is nothing to keep me from hearing you laugh and seeing you smile —just as you are smiling now!— for years and years to come, and it made me so very," she pressed a quick kiss to Lucy's temple, "_very_ happy to think of it. That's all; there's nothing wrong in the least."

Lucy, on hearing this explanation, felt warm and happy all over to know that the sound of her laugh and the sight of her smile made her sister so content. Flinging her arms around Susan's waist, she gave a fierce, impassioned squeeze, such as only Lucy could give.

"Susan," she said, tipping her chin up so she could look at Susan as she spoke, "you may hear my laugh from now until the end of _time_, if you wish it. I am only so glad to know that you are here to hear it."

To this promise Susan made no immediate reply. She only looked thoughtful, and a little sad. She trailed her fingers through Lucy's hair, and both sisters continued down the hall as their brothers, at last having sorted out the difficulties of assassination attempts and impromptu hand-to-hand combat in the corridor, made their way back toward them in a condition best described as greatly winded and not too very badly marked up. Just before the Kings came within earshot once more, Susan tilted her head down over Lucy's, placed her mouth close to her sister's ear, and spoke.

"We both know, I think, that such luxuries are not the province of any monarch. Between now and the end of time we will be lost to one another many times over, and we will know, when that happens, that we must bear the loss if we are to properly carry out all duties that have been and will be entrusted to us. But oh! Lucy," giving the little girl's shoulder a squeeze, "I would wait a lifetime _twice_ if I knew that at the end of everything, I could see you smile again."

It is part of being a Queen, I am afraid, to hear empty flattery day in and day out. It is the sorry duty of any regent to hear false promises paired with every professed need, to discern selfish desires and ulterior motives lurking beneath the most innocent-seeming wishes for good weather and a pleasant day. Lucy knew all of this already, and would come to know it even better in all the years she spent as Narnia's most guileless Queen.

Every broken promise would break her heart and every word reneged on would wound her to the depths of her soul, but through it all you may be pleased to know that there was one vow to which Lucy clung with all the tenacity that only the truest heart can possess. Knights might flatter heedlessly and princes play her false, but Susan would die twice for the sake of Lucy's smile.

It was the sort of promise, Lucy knew, that could last until the very end of time.

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** The final chapter of _Someone Else's Story_ will go up next, followed by the final chapter of _Kingdoms Come_. Yup, it's true! Only one chapter left to go before this story is done.

There is another story that will come after this, but before I get all caught up in that I do want to say thank you so much to everybody who has stuck with this piece for two years, as well as those who discovered it at some point along the way and took the time to let me know what they thought of it. All those who have left feedback, who have told me how they reacted to various parts this story, served to better shape my own understanding thereof; I do truly appreciate that.

Up next: Ever After, in which the ending is anything but.


	21. Ever After

Ever After

O0O0O0O

Narnian autumns are never twice the same. It is, Lucy says, the loveliest thing about them— that one never knows what grand and wonderful thing will happen from one year to the next, and so they are always worth anticipating. I do not know that Susan agrees with this assessment —Susan does not do well with the unplanned— but I know she would never intentionally say anything to dampen Lucy's joy, and so that first autumn that the monarchs spent in Narnia found both Queens in a state of great excitement.

They busied themselves with the final inspections of all the properties that would be indwelt that winter, making note of any improvements left to be made. Lucy travelled from home to home, reacquainting herself with all her subjects, being glad to know them and to learn of all they had done in her absence. Susan was brought up to date on all particulars of the Cair and its housekeeping by Mrs Clogg and undertook to determine which posts wanted staffing, how much food would need to be set aside that winter, and just how far they could be expected to strain their resources without people going badly hungry.

This sort of work was just what Lucy and Susan best loved, and so the close of summer found them a glad pair indeed. The same, I am afraid, cannot be said of the Narnian Kings. Oh, they started out happily enough, I believe— King Edmund took great pleasure in touring the newly-rebuilt roads, inspecting and praising the diligent work of the Moles who had dug drainage ditches and built up roadbeds and the Giants who had stomped them down flat. King Peter met with the Castle Guard, and both brothers began their tutelage under Fergal, who had made his way North with the Narnian company on their return from Archenland.

These sort of things were exactly what the brothers liked best, too, and it might have been that they were a very merry little family, had it not been for the sudden return one day in late summer of Susan and Lucy both, who had not been expected back from their inspection of certain Western properties for hours yet.

"Don't tell them, Susan; don't you see, you _mustn't_," Lucy was heard to instruct her sister as they sidled through a small, little-used utility door around the back of the Cair.

"Lucy, if you are suggesting that I _lie_ to our brothers—"

"I am suggesting nothing of the sort! How could you even think such a thing? I am only saying there is no reason that the subject need ever arise. If you do not speak of it and if I say nothing of the matter—"

"What matter is that?" Edmund stepped from the shadows of an alcove a little further down the corridor. Both Queens stopped in their tracks. Lucy looked pleadingly at Susan, who frowned.

"Lucy, I told you; I will not lie."

"Nor am I asking you to! Edmund," the smaller Queen rounded on their brother, "Edmund won't you please trust me that it isn't anything you need to know about? And that it's certainly not anything Peter should ever have to hear of."

Naturally this did nothing to assuage the King's curiosity, and he demanded to be told at once what had happened. Lucy did her best to persuade Susan that nothing need be said, but Susan, very white around her lips, refused to agree with Lucy on that point, and so the story came out. As soon as Edmund heard it, he marched his sisters straight into the stable yard to tell the story to Peter, who was in the middle of being beat about the head by Fergal.

"A _Hag_?" Peter dropped his sword. Fergal uttered oaths, grabbed the sword up from the dirt and clouted the King on the back of the head before shoving the weapon back into the boy's hands.

"_And_ a Minotaur," Edmund added, his arms crossed over his chest.

"But they're quite _dead_ now," Lucy added earnestly. "Susan killed them both."

"_Susan_ did?" Peter swung round to stare at his sister, and saw that she looked quite green.

"It— can we please not _discuss_ it?" Susan murmured. "You know now that it happened, and that is all I meant for you to do. I don't particularly wish to carry on a _conversation_ about it."

"You, lass?" Fergal leaned on his own sword and studied the Queen with interest. Susan, at fourteen, was yet very slight and not of the height she would be when she was fully grown, so it was understandable that the idea of her killing a Minotaur would occasion one's curiosity.

Susan looked at her toes as much as she dared without actually appearing ashamed. "It was nothing, really. Can we _please_ not—"

"_Nothing_!" Lucy cried. Now that the story had begun to be told, she could not countenance that it be told with anything short of unbridled enthusiasm. "I should say it was a good deal of something! She shot them, you know," she added, rounding on their little audience— Fergal intrigued, Edmund amused, and Peter a shade of purple that made coherent speech impossible. "We were just finishing up at Lowland Keep and we meant to ride south to look in on the manor at the Lowland Ford when we saw them. I suppose they'd been watching us for some time, probably to make sure we were alone, and then at last just as we were mounted and underway, they came out of the trees to block the path. Susan was _marvellous_! She had her bow, of course, and so she just _shot_ them!"

"Lucy!" Susan looked increasingly ill and desperate with every word her sister spoke. "Lucy, _please_—"

"Must be quite a shot," Fergal said, still studying Susan. "P'rhaps we ought to set her Majesty up with a target and see—"

"I wouldn't have thought it of you, Susan," Edmund said thoughtfully. "Lucy, yes, but . . ."

Susan looked at him, then, and Edmund was immediately silent.

"She had a dagger," said the Queen. There was a tremor in her voice as she spoke. "She had a dagger just like that of the Hag who . . . in the Western Wood . . . she was coming straight for us. She was looking at Lucy. I had to— there wasn't any other—" but she stopped speaking then in order to run over to a distant corner of the yard, where she was violently ill. Everybody kindly looked away from her.

"Still wouldn't mind seeing her shoot," Fergal said, after a minute's silence had passed.

"Oh," said Edmund, "I doubt she'd go in for that— but look here, Peter, are you quite all right? You look a bit . . . er . . ."

Peter didn't just look . . . er . . . he felt it, too. He reclaimed his tongue at last, only to say "if I thought for a minute you'd not find some way out of it I'd lock you both in the tower for the next ninety years."

"Peter!" Lucy cried. "Oh, Peter, how _can_ you be so unfair?"

Edmund scratched his head. "We haven't _got_ a gaol tower, have we?" he asked of nobody in particular. Peter didn't seem to hear either of them.

"Put you both under lock and key . . . guards six men deep . . . a _Hag_, Lucy! And a _Minotaur_! What if you had been alone? What if Susan could not reach her bow? You'd both be—" but the thought of even imagining the end of that sentence made Peter feel ill, and so he did not.

"Well," he said instead, "you are both just not going anywhere, ever again. That is all there is to it." And he clanked and clattered away in his battered practice armour to take a few violent swings at various objects, secure in the knowledge that the matter had been settled.

Of course anyone who has siblings could tell you straight away that the matter was nowhere close to settled. Lucy at once put up a terrible fuss and spent the remainder of the day bemoaning the injustice of her brother's high-handed edict. She tried to persuade Susan to join her in this endeavour, but Susan's stomach was still so at war with itself that she was forced to take to her bed with a damp cloth over her eyes. When Lucy attempted to present her case at that point, Susan banished her from the room by threatening to side with Peter, and so Lucy left Susan quite alone after that.

It was Edmund whom the younger Queen next approached, and it was in Edmund that she found her reluctant ally— chiefly because she promised him she would never let him be until he came to see things her way. With Edmund at her side, Lucy next began to beleaguer Peter until at last (when Edmund, looking rather ragged around the edges, seized his brother by his shirt and said "you are looking at a desperate man, Peter; just give her what she _wants!_") the older King gave in, saying that Lucy might go abroad once more, but only if she took with her at all times a detail of body-guards.

This was quite all right with Lucy, who was glad of the company anyway (Susan having professed, from beneath her damp cloth, a firm intention of not leaving her bed until next spring) but it put both Kings in a sorry state of mood. Peter was by no means easy in his mind about letting Lucy go, body-guard or not, and so he sulked his way around the castle in company with Edmund whenever Lucy went out. Because Peter spent so much time in company with Edmund, the younger King got pretty tetchy too, until both of them could hardly stand to be in the same room as one another.

Lucy, however, was fully restored to good humour and Susan, once she rose from her bed the morning following the attack and resolved not to think of the incident again until at least a year had passed, was quite restored to her former good nature as well (she still refused Fergal his request to see her shoot, but she did so in such a way that the fellow, far from being put out or disappointed, merely got very red, ducked his head and muttered sincere apologies for having ever asked such a thing of her in the first place).

So it was that autumn came on with the Queens in fine spirits, and the Kings in something rather less than that. Of course we can hardly fault them for it; they kept their discomfort very private, never permitting it to inconvenience any of their subjects. Although their body-servants naturally picked up on a bit of the conflict, neither boy was of the type to vent his spleen at the nearest handy individual, and so it was really only the Kings themselves who knew the full extent of their own displeasure— for of course, they could neither of them quite bring themselves to confess their unhappiness to Susan or Lucy,

"Susan could make her see reason," Peter muttered one morning, as the brothers took an uneasy meeting in the empty council-chamber. "We should tell Susan how it's affecting us, knowing that Lucy is abroad when there are dangers about. Susan would understand. She would do something . . . say something . . . she's _sensible_, Susan is."

"Or," Edmund said, "maybe you could just stop letting it affect you. Ever think of that? Lucy's a _Queen_, Peter. I know she's all of ten, but she's as much a Queen of Narnia as you are a King. Didn't you tell me what a marvel she was, when you travelled with her? Didn't you say you couldn't believe she was able to do even half the things she did?"

Peter squirmed to hear this truth, and Edmund leaned forward to capture his brother's gaze with his own.

"How," the younger King demanded, "is she ever going to be able to serve these people as she is meant to serve them if you keep on getting in her way? You think you know what she is meant to do, and yet how _can_ you be so sure, when by your own admission she astounds you with her ability to do things you had never imagined she might? You've got to start seeing her as you saw her when you sailed. You've got to stop being so afraid of what might happen— or else," with a grimace, "you've at least got to _pretend_ you've stopped being so afraid, because I really don't want to have to knock you down before we're even back home a month."

Peter sat silent a very long moment as Edmund began to sort through a stack of legal complaints that had been lodged in their absence. At last the older boy snorted, and shook his head.

"Knock me down," he muttered. "As if you could!"

Edmund smiled down at his work. "Only one way to find out . . ."

The maids who spent the evening tidying and sorting the piles of parchment that had been knocked about by the wrestling Kings did not _say_ anything, of course, but they looked extremely disapproving as they worked. The Kings had the grace to apologise, but I am afraid they were grinning a bit too broadly to look as though they really meant it.

O0O0O0O

As the unease of a King gave way to his grudging acceptance of The Way Things Must Be, and as the last glow of late summer gave way to the crisp golds and reds of true autumn, the first of the new Narnians began to arrive.

I do not know if you can begin to imagine the undiluted joy that marked that period of arrival. If you have a very large family —the sort that is perhaps a bit peculiar and out of the ordinary but which dotes upon all its own members with that fierce, devoted sort of love that knits together even the most dissimilar of persons— then perhaps you might be able to grasp the emotions that seized all of those who ran down to the docks each day on sighting a distant sail, or who flocked to the castle-end of the peninsula as newcomers appeared far off down the great Land-Road, travelling through the King's Wood to reach the home of their new Kings and Queens.

The welcome for each new Narnian was invariably thunderous and overjoyed. The Birds developed a rather alarming habit of swooping exuberantly down at the heads of the newcomers, pulling up at the very last moment to burst into songs of welcome; the Horses charged up the slope from the Sea in one massive herd ("they do look like a stampede, don't they?" Lucy had cried in wonder) and badly frightened a few riders, but that was nothing compared to the reactions of those on board the ships who found themselves suddenly facing a solid wall of upward-rushing, downward-falling water as the naiads put their all into making the newcomers welcome.

"I do hope we don't frighten them all back whence they came," Susan fretted early one morning, as she and Lucy made ready to ride to Archenland and lead back a large collection of single-person families who had not felt it was safe for them to travel through the woods alone. "I mean, do you remember how alarming it was for us, when first we heard the animals speak?"

"Oh, yes!" Lucy laughed. "Why, we thought to attack Mr Beaver, did we not? How frightened we were! But it did not take us very long at all to love him, did it? And now he is one of our most trusted Scouts in that part of the kingdom, and how we should ever have ferreted out that one little colony of Her forces without his help I can't imagine." She bounced a little in her saddle, and the horse beneath her betrayed some surprise and uncertainty on being confronted by such a confusing cue. "I am sure it will not take any of our new Narnians very long to love them either."

Susan, who thought that perhaps the new Narnians might understandably be taken aback by the very confusing welcome they had received, murmured that maybe a period of adjustment was to be expected. Lucy, unconcerned with adjustment periods, said she would race Susan down the Land Road. Susan said that was Quite Out of the Question, and the Queens' body-guard supported her in this, so they rode on at a leisurely pace— but even a leisurely pace could not dampen Lucy's joy to know that their Narnian family was so wonderfully grown.

Their ride was mercifully uneventful, and they reached the castle at Anvard just past midday. No sooner did the Narnian standard top the hill than did a small figure dart out from the stableyard and run madly across the plain to meet them.

"Why, who in the world—" said Lucy, but Susan was laughing and smiling, and urged Norry into a gallop that ended in a spray of dirt and turf just yards from the little Prince of Archenland.

"You came back!" Corin exulted, just before he was caught up in the arms of his friend and twirled about beneath the midday sun.

"I did! What, playmate, didst surely not doubt my word?"

"Well," said Corin, "maybe a _little_ . . ." then he apologised handsomely for his lack of faith in the word of the Queen, and Susan said she supposed she could find it in her heart to forgive him.

"But look here," she added, "I have brought with me the Queen Lucy— do you remember her?"

"No," Corin confessed, looking up at the newly-arrived little girl on her horse. He then looked down from the Queen to her horse, and studied Lucy's mare with interest. "She looks very fast," he observed, putting out a hand to stroke the luxuriant mane. "Lots faster than my pony."

"Well I don't know about your pony," said Lucy, "but oh! she is ever so fast. Here— want to see?" and she put out two little arms, into which Corin leaped before it could occur to Susan to stop him.

"Lucy," she said, "oh, Lucy, _do_ be careful—"

"Of course!" Lucy said, and then they were off, thundering down over the hill toward the gates. She did not enter them right away, however, but rather drew her mare around in a wide circle, urging her back up the hill. Then they swung around again, and as they passed Susan the older Queen could hear the laughter of both riders as it was borne back to her on the wind.

Her chest ached very badly, then, and she felt much as Peter had done not very long ago on first hearing the news of the attack his sisters had faced in the wood. She thought then of much the same thing that Peter had thought on that day— how very perilous and inconvenient a thing it is, to love somebody.

O0O0O0O

"And what's that?" Prince Corin studied his plate with lively apprehension. Queen Lucy, leaning over to examine the morsel in question, scrunched up her nose in consideration.

"Asparagus, maybe?" she said, and gave it an experimental poke. "In some sort of dripping."

"Eugh," said Corin, but then caught the eye of Queen Susan, who was seated on his other side, and at the sight of her warning expression was inspired to quickly catch up one spear of the vegetable and cram it hastily into his mouth lest she threaten to see to it that he ate asparagus at breakfast too, for his ill manners. He waited until she had looked away, satisfied with his compliance, before he quickly swept the rest of the serving off his plate and onto the floor where two of the castle dogs proved themselves not nearly so choosy as he.

Unwelcome vegetation notwithstanding, they made a pleasant and intimate little company that night. Susan and Lucy had already seen to meeting and speaking with all who would accompany them home the next day, and at the end of that exercise had been invited to join King Lune and his son for a more intimate repast than court protocols normally permit. Only the Narnian Queens, the Archen King and Prince and a very few courtiers were gathered round a table whose proportions had been designed to facilitate conversation, rather than impress lookers-on with the grandeur of those who sat at it.

It was, Susan thought, a really lovely sort of table. She eyed its proportions thoughtfully, wondering which room in the Cair would be best suited to featuring a similar item of furniture.

As her sister began mentally redecorating their home, Queen Lucy engaged the nobleman across the table in a discussion on the merits of the lady's horse, which conversation was eagerly joined by Prince Corin, who envied Queen Lucy her horse but was not so petty as to wholly begrudge her the joy of her ownership.

"Her Majesty says I may ride Poli if I promise not to run away on her," he explained, and the courtier, amused, asked if the exercise was scheduled to take place any time soon.

"No, nor shall it, I fear," Lucy said, looking regretful, "for His Highness has made it quite plain that he has every intention of running away with her the moment he is on her back."

"Because," Corin put in, "she seems awfully fast, and just the sort of horse on which I might expect to have adventures, you see."

The courtier, fighting a losing battle with his own mirth, addressed Corin with the observation that the young prince might be likelier to get the opportunity to ride the mare if he were not so frank in his dealings with her mistress. Corin, at this suggestion, was gravely affronted.

"Lie to Queen Lucy?" he asked in tones of deep indignation. "I could never!" And he might have leaped to his feet at that moment to call the courtier out for suggesting such a thing, had not the Narnian Queen's little hand on his own even smaller arm forestalled this attempt in its infancy.

"If I have not told you so already, please let me tell you now that you are a dear and wonderful boy," Lucy informed him, "for being so forthright with me, though it has cost you the chance to ride Poli — at least, it has cost you the chance today." She smiled at him, and he beamed back at her. "After all," she observed, "who knows what you will find it in your heart to promise me tomorrow."

And Corin, who greatly desired the chance to ride Poli for himself, said in all truthfulness that he truly hoped tomorrow he might be able to make her the promise she would need to hear, ere she granted him permission to seat Poli without the benefit of the Queen serving as escort.

"But," he added, honesty once more triumphing as his little face fell into a gloomier countenance than it had worn moments before, "I am afraid I can't promise you that I will be ready to promise it just yet."

And Lucy, who had followed that quaint little speech with perfect ease, said that was all right, she quite understood, and Prince Corin knew where he could find her if ever he changed his mind.

O0O0O0O

As I am sure you know, when you are in pleasant company it is not an agreeable thing to take your leave. Even departing the feast-table that evening came very hard for all the feasters, and Prince Corin clung most doggedly to the hands of Queens Susan and Lucy all the way up the stairs to the guarded mouth of the corridor that led to the Royal apartments.

"Why, welcome back, your Majesty," beamed Albert, who naturally remembered Susan from her time there before. Susan, who also remembered Albert, smiled in reply and thanked him for his kindly salutation before addressing herself once more to the task of extracting her hand from the — surprisingly mighty — grip of the young prince.

"Grieved though I am to disappoint thee," she said, "truly, canst not make a habit of following thy guests to their bedchambers! Come, now; unhand me, and we shall see if we cannot make some sport tomorrow ere I return home."

But Corin was still unwilling to surrender his prize of Susan's hand in his right, and Lucy's in his left. Only when Lucy dropped to her knees beside him and began to whisper in his ear did Corin at last loose his grip, bob a very quick bow to each Queen and take off down the corridor that led to his own chamber. Susan, staring after him, was seized by an uneasy foreboding that prompted her to round on her sister and demand to know what, exactly, she had said. Lucy, the very picture of studied innocence, clasped her hands before her and shrugged.

"Oh, nothing very much, Susan. Dear me," with an artful yawn, "I _am_ getting sleepy! Isn't it time we were off to bed?" And then, with a very wide-awake giggle, she too took off down the corridor, sprinting all the way to the door of the room she and Susan shared.

By the time Susan had also achieved the guest apartments and stepped inside the cosy, well-appointed room lit by firelight, she found her sister sprawled atop the counterpane, emitting gusty snores. Not at all put off by this dissembling, but charmed all the same by the vigour with which Lucy entered the deception, the older Queen stood a moment, looking down on the younger girl. With her limbs going every whichway, hair pooling beneath her head in a puddle of molten gold and the soft curves of her face bathed in the dancing glow from the fireplace, Lucy looked all at once more grown up than Susan had ever seen her and more vulnerable than Susan cared to contemplate.

"You might at least have removed your slippers before getting on the bed," she murmured, more in an effort to clear a lump from her throat than anything else. "Goodness, Lucy, is that asparagus dripping on your toe?" She removed the offending object from the foot that bore it as Lucy, tiring of feigned sleep, bobbed up in bed to watch with detached fascination as Susan set about tidying her.

"Look, you've a smut on your nose," a handkerchief was employed in the brisk removal of this, "and my goodness, Lucy, isn't this a new gown?" A dismayed finger explored a hole torn in the sleeve near the cuff.

"All my gowns are new ones," Lucy replied, unperturbed by her destruction of this one. "None of the old ones fit when I got back with Peter; don't you remember? You made them make me all new ones."

Susan did remember. The memory didn't seem to soothe her, though, as she marched over to the mantelpiece and took down the sewing basket. Lucy, placid in the face of her sister's unrest, sat patiently on the bed with her arm extended, as though expecting Susan to set to mending the sleeve with Lucy still inside it. Susan, of course, returned to the bed and told Lucy to remove the dress, which instruction Lucy cheerfully obeyed, tugging her own night rail over her head and scrambling back into the bed and under the sheets before Susan could even lift her hand to ring for somebody to help Lucy change.

"You really must get used to being attended one of these days, dear," she observed, but she did so in a very mild fashion, so that Lucy knew she was not really so put out over it as she might have been.

"I will have you know," said the young Queen with some asperity, "that I _have_ been attended, these months we were gone. Did you know?"

"I did not," Susan said. Her needle flashed in the firelight as she threaded it.

"Mmm-hmm." Lucy squirmed a little, rolling onto her back. She blinked at the canopy above her head, a heavy, rich pane of deep blue velvet. She thought it looked rather like the sky, and was about to say so when the creak of a hinge distracted her. She bobbed up in bed once more to look across the room to the door. Susan turned her head as well, and both Queens watched as a slim, dark girl entered and stood just inside the door, her hands clasped a little too tightly in front of her.

"Why, Elia!" Susan got to her feet, her curiosity melting away in place of her joy. "How lovely to see you again — I have missed you, these past weeks!"

"Your Majesty is too kind," Elia murmured. Susan, still smiling, declaimed this nicety with a few earnest words.

"But come," she added, "and meet my sister! For I have brought her with me this time, you see. Lucy, may I present Elia? She attended me when last Edmund and I were here, and she is a dear friend. Elia, this is my sister, Her Majesty the Queen Lucy of Narnia."

"Your Majesty," Elia's curtsey was so hasty as to seem almost perfunctory. Lucy, even more intrigued by the maid than she had been by the idea of an anonymous opener of their bedroom door, sat up a little straighter in bed.

"Elia," she said, and nodded. "It is very nice to meet you; I am sorry, but you see I have already changed my clothes for bed. Susan thinks it is because I do not care to be attended, but that is only a little bit of the reason." The little girl's guileless blue eyes then held those of the maid, as though she knew that they shared this in common; that Elia's task of dressing the ladies for bed was only a little bit of the reason she had come into the room in the first place.

And so it proved.

"Ma'am," Elia whispered, addressing Susan but studying that Queen's toes, "Ma'am, I hope you will forgive me, but I — I have a favour to beg of you, and if you see fit to grant it, you have my word of honour that you will not find me ungrateful, not until the day I die."

"My goodness, Elia," Susan was surprised, "what is it? You are not in any trouble, I trust?"

"Oh, no; no, nothing like . . . I only thought, when I heard that you had returned, that it must be a sign. I had meant to ask it of you before you left last time, only somehow I could not work up the nerve, and it seemed so ill-timed, so very disrespectful of me, so I did not. Then you left, and I realised that I was so sorry not to have asked, after all. And you came back, and I think . . . I think it must have been _meant_."

This explanation that the girl offered was really anything but. Susan, however, was too kind to say as much; instead she smiled encouragingly at Elia, and said only "do go on, then," so Elia did.

"I had hoped . . . I wondered if maybe . . . I know my people don't come from Narnia, not for years and years back, when they came into Archenland the very first time. It's not the sort of coming from Narnia that you — and the Queen Lucy, of course," with a respectful nod in that person's direction, "and the Kings Peter and Edmund — had meant, of course, when . . . but I wondered, all the same, if perhaps I might . . . that is," desperately, with a boldness that any looking on could not have believed was native to her, "might I possibly come back, too?"

"Why, Elia —" Susan said, surprised, and Elia rushed on.

"I know it must seem very improper, asking so soon after my Lady . . . that is, after she . . . but you see, there isn't anybody else here, now. Not for me. Her Majesty took me on because I hadn't anybody else and she said I might learn a trade and I was very pleased to wait on her, and I loved her, I did. But all her other ladies, they've gone back to their families now, you see, whereas there isn't anyone . . . I have nobody, still — it feels I have nobody even more than I did before, actually — and there isn't anything else that I can really _do_. This is all I know, and there are no ladies left for me to wait on, and so . . . I had hoped . . ."

"You might . . . well, you know, you might . . . marry," Susan said feebly, rather bowled over by the suddenness of it all. Lucy, previously quite content to remain an onlooker to the scene, immediately broke her silence with a hearty snort.

"Oh, really, Susan! How can you be so silly? What a terrible reason to marry that would be — because it is the only thing left for her to do! I am sure you cannot mean that, really."

To her credit Susan, on thinking it over, found that she did not mean it after all, and she begged Elia's pardon for suggesting it in such an off-hand fashion. Elia said that was quite all right, no harm done, only . . . could she please . . .

"Oh," Susan said. "I — well, I am not sure . . ." and she looked on the young woman with agony. Recovered now from her shock at the request, Susan found that all she wanted was to say yes. So badly did she want to say yes that it almost pained her, but it was not her place as a single ruler to do so; everyone's decision to grant a petition needed to be seconded by one other monarch, and they had no petition from Elia to review. She could give an answer eventually, but not tonight. "I'm sorry; I _am_ so sorry. I just am not sure . . ."

"What isn't there to be sure about?" Lucy wondered. She swung her legs over the side of the bed to study her sister and the desperately hopeful maid. "You speak very highly of her, and I know you never say such things unless you mean them. If you recommend her, Susan, that is good enough for me; I shall second her petition, on the strength of your approval, if you would like to make it official."

Susan turned a look of deep gratitude on her little sister.

"Thank you, Lucy," she said, and Lucy, only too pleased to be of help, said no trouble at all, really.

Then Susan turned back to Elia, and extended her hand to formally offer to girl a place in Narnia and a post in the castle, to which offer Elia responded with floods of tears that might have been embarrassing for her, later, had not Susan and Lucy (the latter leaping down from the bed and crossing the floor to do so) both promptly caught her up in their arms and hugged her and told her not to be such a goose, she was coming home with them, and that was surely no reason to cry.

Only after Elia had composed herself and helped Susan change for bed, leaving both Queens alone together once more, did Susan again address her sister.

"Thank you," she said again, this time much more softly than before. "You know I have the hardest time doing things when there isn't . . . that is, when —"

"Oh, I know you like to be proper." Lucy flopped back against the pillows once more (she was really raising an awful cloud of feathers by that point, and if Susan hadn't been so preoccupied with other things she would certainly have told her to stop). "I know everything needs to be set and ordered or else you are scared it won't work quite right. That's all right. I could see you wanted her to come, but of course we're not supposed to make these decisions just one of us by ourselves, at least not according to those rules you worked out beforehand. I knew you wouldn't break them, not even when you wanted to so badly . . . so I saw a way for it to happen, is all. You don't need to thank me for it or anything like that."

"I don't thank you because I _need_ to, Lucy." Susan smiled. "I thank you because I am truly grateful to have you here with me; grateful to have somebody who meets my every weakness with her strength, and does not scorn me when she sees my failures. I thank you because I am grateful for _you_, and to not express my gratitude would seem very . . . wrong."

She then bowed her head over her sewing once more, working in silence as she set the final stitches in place in her sister's sleeve before standing to shake the gown out carefully. Lucy, now curled up like a kitten on her side of the great bed, watched in like silence as Susan hung the dress with tender care beside its fellow, the dress that Lucy would wear to ride home the next day.

It was only after Susan had crawled into bed beside Lucy, and the two sisters huddled together against the autumn's night chill that had set to seeping in through every crack in the stone walls of the castle at Anvard, that the little Queen spoke. In tones so soft that Susan almost missed them, Lucy whispered:

"I am grateful for you, too."

O0O0O0O

"You returned to us pleasantly soon, Cousin, only to dishearten us once again with your departure," King Lune did not look reproachful, exactly, but there was certainly a touch of the downcast on his usually cheery face as he stood with Susan in the stableyard the next morning, watching that young woman ready herself and her party to leave.

"It grieves me to grieve our host and our friend," Susan returned, "but how can I possibly hope to return to visit you once more, if I do not first depart?"

"Pah, wordplay," Lune chided, and for a moment sounded very like his young son. "A trick of diplomats!"

"Just so," Susan agreed, pursing her lips for just a moment, and then her smile appeared. "Dear Cousin, if only you could accompany us! King Edmund should be pleased to see you once more, and I know that King Peter would welcome your counsel on any number of matters. When might we hope to once more host our friend in the court of Cair Paravel?"

"Not, I fear, for some time to come." The very smallest of shadows touched the King's face, and Susan saw where laugh-lines at his eyes had been joined by lines of care. "It would not do for me to set a precedent of flight when I am . . ." the word would not quite come to him, though, and instead he looked down for just a minute. Susan, the soul of tact, stood perfectly still and perfectly silent and permitted the King his private struggle. When he looked up again, he inclined his head in silent acknowledgement of her generosity.

Susan, in turn, inclined her head in reply, and might have said something had not Queen Lucy and Prince Corin at that moment come bursting from a side door at top speed. They were a flushed, dishevelled and laughing pair, and appeared to be engaged in some complicated chase game, the quarry of which seemed to be at turns neither and both of them.

"Lucy! Oh, Lucy, have a care!" Susan implored, at seeing her sister nearly collide with a fleet-footed groom, who only just dodged clear of her in time. "We're about to leave, it wouldn't do for you to injure yourself before we . . ." she stopped speaking, then, at the sight of the groom leading Corin's pony, saddled and bridled, from the stables. One look at the flushed, guilty faces of the young Queen of Narnia and her co-conspirator, the little Prince of Archenland, was all it took to tell Susan exactly what promise Lucy had made to the little boy the night before to induce him to remove himself to his bed so readily.

"_Lucy_!"

"Oh, Susan, please don't be cross with me! I only thought it would be a perfect thing, to take him back with us for a time."

"Yes, and Father said I might go," Corin added. "Didn't you, Father?"

"When I did so," King Lune frowned, "I admit that I was under the impression that the invitation had come from _both_ their Majesties."

"I am sorry if we misled you, Cousin," Lucy was immediately contrite. "I certainly did not believe that Susan would actually object — or at least, that she would continue to object. She always objects a _little_, at the start."

Susan, pursing her lips, attempted to look greatly displeased at all of this subterfuge. It didn't come off as well as she could have hoped, however, chiefly because she was honestly pleased at the thought of Corin returning with them. Her pleasure didn't abate in the least as their party assembled and readied itself, even when Corin and the small son of a new Narnian family got into a wrestling match perilously close to the hooves of two mercifully patient horses, and had to be dragged apart and shouted at rather a lot before they promised not to do that again — at least, not within trampling distance of the horses.

Susan was smiling by the time she was handed up onto Norry's back, from which height she reached down to accept a firm handclasp from King Lune.

"I will not disappoint your trust in us, Cousin," she assured him, inclining her head in Corin's direction.

"Madam," King Lune said gently, "this, I already know."

Then he stood well back from the party that by now threatened to overflow the stableyard by dint of numbers alone, and lifted his hand in both dismissal and farewell. It was as good a signal as any, and it was the one on which the party departed, more or less falling in step behind the Queens, the Prince and their guard at the very head of the group.

King Lune stood waving in the courtyard until the last rider had topped the ridge at the far end of the field and disappeared from sight, continuing on up the hill to the pass at Anvard and over that, to Narnia.

O0O0O0O

As Lucy and Susan busied themselves with the homecoming from Archenland, Peter and Edmund dealt as best they could with the intricacies of settling all those who had come already to Narnia. What had begun as a trickle of incoming Narnians fast became a torrent, and even faster became a flood. There was no question of hosting them at Cair Paravel for even a night— there were simply too many of them (or so Mrs Clogg had informed the High King, in such a fashion that the High King immediately fell all over himself apologising to her and resolved in his own mind to speak to Susan about possibly giving Mrs Clogg a rise in pay and a very long and lovely holiday as soon as possible, or else risk losing her services entirely).

So Peter and Edmund fell to sorting everyone into groups by location, and appointed guides for each group to lead them into the right area and see them safely settled. They also appointed outriders for each group, given that it was nothing like a certainty that the areas into which they rode would be free of the Witch's scattered forces, and, at Edmund's suggestion, arranged for arms sufficient to equip each property against a rudimentary attack.

"Though what the armoury will have to say about that I don't care to contemplate," Peter said, staring moodily at the tally that lay before him. He tried not to look very long at the number of weapons he had agreed to provide from his own stores— he did not begrudge any Narnian what was needed, of course, but they had come to learn very quickly that the stewards of Cair Paravel took a highly proprietary interest in those things they had been appointed to manage, and it did not do to upset them unduly. Peter rather suspected that to deplete the castle's stores of arms would upset the armourers a great deal.

"Cheer up, Pete!" Edmund urged his brother. "Look at it like this — either you dole out pikes and pikestaffs and incur the wrath of the armourers, or else you send these folk home unarmed and risk the displeasure of our sisters. As I see it, either way you don't stand to come out on top, so you might as well have the pleasure of picking your poison, don't you think?"

"Encouraging as always, Edmund," Peter muttered, but he acknowledged the truth in what his brother said, and in the end elected to dole out pikes and pikestaffs. The armourers deprived of weaponry, he thought, could not possibly prove equal to his sisters for ire should he send their subjects home with insufficient means to defend themselves against any horrors they might encounter along the way.

Peter was a King who knew how to pick his battles.

O0O0O0O

Peter was not, however, unfortunately, a King who knew how to handle a domestic crisis, which was why he was the first one out of the castle at the sight of the party from Archenland approaching that afternoon. Susan did not even have time to dismount from Norry before she found her brother clutching at her foot in the closest thing to panic she had ever seen in him.

"Peter, my goodness, what is it? What's the matter?" the Queen wondered, managing to free her foot from the King's grip long enough to dismount.

The story emerged rather too rapidly to follow at first, but bit by bit pieces were detached from each other until even Corin, who had approached toward the end of it to take Susan's hand in his and rest his head against her hip to listen to the exchange, had a pretty good idea of what was going on.

A ship bearing an assortment of claimants from the Lone Islands had docked two days in advance of its expected arrival. Peter had given pikes and pikestaffs to other claimants, there were presently no more weapons to hand out and it was not safe to send them home without arms. However, even though they might have found beds enough for all in the castle there was, according to the Cook via Mrs Clogg, absolutely no hope of the kitchen staff, such as it were at this present time, contriving to prepare a meal for so many — especially with the party from Archenland arriving, too.

"So the problem," Lucy summed up, "is really one of feeding everybody, somehow, is that it?"

That was it exactly, Peter agreed, and looked a little helpless. Lucy, smiling fondly up at him, slipped her hand inside his.

"I think," she said, "that we can probably work around that."

And so it proved. It was certainly not an elegant meal that was set before them that night, but it was a meal in which nearly all of the feasters had taken some hand in preparing. With everybody determined to serve in some capacity or other Lucy had taken it upon herself to divide up the labour, assigning the cooking parts of the meal to those whose noses could reasonably be trusted to know the difference between food that was cooked and food that had been so charred to the bottom of the pot that even a hammer and chisel could not have stirred it. The gathering parts she assigned to those who could be relied upon to fetch what was needed, and the chopping and measuring of everything was relegated to those who remained, all of whom bent to the task at hand without so much as a murmur of complaint.

The soothing of a highly irate Mrs Clogg, Lucy left to Susan. There were some matters of diplomacy to which the young Queen did not yet feel equal, and that was one of them.

The remainder of it, though, was carried off beautifully. There were a few rough patches, of course; Edmund got a little carried away with the peeling of potatoes and peeled rather more of them than were needed, driving the cook to last-minute creativity and the addition of potatoes to many dishes that had not previously required them. A new, rather nervous countess chopped carrots a little slower than was required, the result being that certain dishes went without carrots. Some of the meat was perhaps a little blacker on the outside than it probably should have been, but for a kitchen full of people who were not universally accustomed to being in a kitchen, it was certainly a notable success.

As Peridan shouldered one of the serving trays to take out into the feast hall, Lucy caught at his arm a little (though only a very little, because she did not want to unbalance the laden platter) and told him to please wait just one moment, for there was a small boy sitting between a loaf of bread and a pot of stew on his tray. Having pulled Prince Corin down from this perch, Lucy kept a firm grip on the little boy's hand and followed Peridan and his now much lighter tray out into the crowded, noisy Great Hall, where every available table and seat had been unearthed and set up for the convenience of the many people who had come home that day.

Lucy and Corin parted ways with Peridan not far inside the door, weaving their way between diners, ducking and squirming between persons who were standing a little too close together the way small children tend to do at parties when there is not quite enough room for them to pass any other way. They were breathless and flushed when they finally achieved their goal, a corner of the head table occupied by Peter, Susan and Edmund, as well as several other people whose names Lucy was pleased to realise she already knew.

"I know it's not exactly the sort of feast that you are so good at preparing," Lucy confided to Susan as she squeezed in between her sister and Clom, a very large, very heavy fellow who was sampling his stew with every sign of deep appreciation, "but I think perhaps we have not done too badly at it, have we?"

"Lucy!" Susan looked surprised, "oh, but Lucy, you have done beautifully. Not every feast need be one such as diplomats prefer — indeed, I think this is a lovely one, and I believe you have even helped me to persuade Mrs Clogg that she need not return to her people in the Western Wood — there, you see?"

And indeed, Mrs Clogg had found a vantage point at the edge of the gathering and appeared to have forgotten her state of agitation of earlier in the day, tucking into a bowl of stew with every appearance of great enjoyment. Lucy felt a flush of pleasure warm her cheeks — or perhaps it was merely the heat of dining in such close quarters. Either way, she felt rather a success and was quite pleased with herself.

"Is this potato on my toast?" Peter asked of nobody in particular.

"If you don't like it," said Edmund, "you may give it to somebody who will appreciate the effort that went into preparing it." And he looked so fearsome that Peter at once devoured his potato-on-toast with as many noises of appreciation as could politely be made, with one's mouth so full of potato and bread.

Lucy giggled into her cup, and decided that, all things told, it was rather the loveliest homecoming she could ever have imagined might happen in Narnia.

O0O0O0O

It is the unhappy duty of every chronicler of any tale to bring, eventually, the final chapter of that tale to its proper conclusion. It is no good the chronicler's being very upset at this, because of course she knew that when she got into the thing in the first place, and she can't say nobody told her it was coming. The difficulty here, of course, is knowing exactly where the tale ought to end — for it did not end, you see, for many, many years yet to come.

You may have heard, of course, of how rich and wonderful the rule of those four children was. You may well know that Lucy's prediction, made so many months before the feast on that stormy evening in Terebinthia, that theirs would be the most glorious history ever, was not so very far off the mark. Kings and Queens for centuries to come would speak the names of the Four with all the reverence that was once accorded to many great historical figures in our own world — though of course now it is more the fashion to realise that such people are, after all, merely people, and perhaps we overdid it a bit with all the veneration.

But for all that their history went on for so long, and was such a well-regarded one, I really do not have the space nor indeed even the time to tell you of every marvellous thing they did, of every fine and private moment they shared nor even of the many thrilling adventures they had together, however much I might wish to. I will therefore instead choose a moment not long after that lovely feast in the Great Hall, when most of the new Narnians had at last been seen off on their way to their new homes and all of those who would make their homes in the village or in the Cair were well on their way to getting themselves settled in.

The morning was a cold one, for winter was making its approach known and everybody had long since taken to bundling up well in wrappers and furs and lovely thick slippers that made the frosty leaves crunch quite pleasantly under their feet as they walked about. In fact, the younger King and Queen were wearing just those sort of slippers that morning. Lucy and Edmund were standing together in the little courtyard at the heart of the Cair, looking for leaves to crunch, when Peter and Susan found them.

"Goodness!" said Susan, who had gotten up rather earlier than she had intended, "aren't you two cold?"

"Only a little," was Lucy's reply. "Won't you join us? Listen, don't they make just the loveliest sound?"

It was, indeed, a rather wonderful sound. Very rustly and crackly; I think you would have quite enjoyed it.

I know that Peter and Susan enjoyed it; they joined their brother and sister in crunching, slipping a little on the wetter of the leaves, laughing and getting their cheeks and noses cold-burnt to a very brilliant shade of red. For just a minute, looking at them then, you might not have known they were the greatest Kings and Queens that Narnia had yet known. For just a moment they looked like children, playing together in the wintry gleam of a cold, grey morning. For just a moment, that is what they were.

"We ought to go in," Susan murmured, even as she located a frost-sparkling leaf and pounced upon it, crackling it most satisfyingly under her feet. "We're to treat with those ambassadors from Calormen this morning, are we not? And there is that banquet this afternoon . . ."

"Yes, I suppose we ought to," Peter said, but looked in no more of a hurry to go in than did Susan. Instead he turned suddenly around, catching Lucy about the waist and swinging her up into the air just before she could leap on his back and try to wrestle him to the ground. "Oho, treason!" he crowed, and Lucy, laughing, denied the charge — it could not be treason, she said, if the attacker were the Queen.

"A tricky problem," Peter admitted, still holding his sister aloft and mostly upside-down. "Hmm. Edmund? Your ruling?"

"I think we'd need to look for some sort of precedent," Edmund said, the solemnity of his expression somewhat offset by twinkling eyes.

"There is no precedent for this," Susan laughed. "There is no precedent for _us_; we, I think, are _quite_ unprecedented in all this world, and I say Lucy is right; it cannot be treason to choke a King, if one is already Queen!" and here she caught her sister's wrist, tugging and twisting as hard she could until Lucy was able to kick her way free of Peter's grip.

The four then faced off in the courtyard, all of them laughing, arming themselves with bundles of frosty leaves to throw at one another until all were in such confusion that nobody knew or even cared who was winning. And this is where we will leave them, the four Pevensies, because this is how I like them best.

They would, of course, go inside eventually. They would tidy their clothing (Susan would see to it that Lucy was tidied properly, given that Lucy was still rather uninterested in any but the most perfunctory sort of tidying) and comb their hair and they would meet and treat with ambassadors and diplomats in a grand and weighty manner that would make them famous all down through the ages.

But before they did that, and long after they had done that for the very last time ever, they would be Just They Four; sometimes very royal, sometimes not quite as much, but four together, then and for ever after.

O0O0O0O

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** I don't even know what to say, really; "thank you" seems the very least of it, and yet it's also all of it. Thank you for sticking with a story that took more than two years(!) to write and thank you for taking the time to tell me what you thought of it.

There will eventually be another one in the same vein as this, all multi-chaptered and no doubt rather more confusing than I initially intended it should be; that next piece is already begun, but with demands on my time being what they are I do not feel I can begin to post it just yet, or else I can't imagine it would manage to wrap itself up in less than two years' time!

I _may_ find the time to put up a one-shot here and there, things that are already mostly completed and only want a touch of polish, but for the next month or two, at least, I know I will be too busy to devote the time that is required of me by a plotty, multi-chapter piece.

Meantime, thank you all again so very, very much for your continued expressions of interest in this piece. Your feedback has cheered me in some very gloomy months, and I am so very grateful to those of you who have taken the time to share your thoughts. They are each and every one of them deeply appreciated.


End file.
